Jason Furman's Reviews > The President Has Been Shot!: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

My children and I listened to this fast-paced audiobook that started with a mini-biography of John F Kennedy, his rise to power, and his Presidency with capsule summaries/context for all of the major events and then went into a reliable, not overhyped, minute-by-minute and eventually second-by-second version of the split screen as Lee Harvey Oswald plans for the assassination and John F Kennedy walks right into it. Swanson does the days following the assassination, the LBJ oath of office, the killing of Oswald, the funeral, and then ends by reflecting on the mystery of Oswald's motives. Overall Swanson is 100% on the lone gunman theory, treats it as a series of chance events that led to it, and mostly views it as someone wanting attention but never renders a definitive judgment.

Overall, Swanson hews closely to history, I personally learned very little but was still never bored in the relatively short narrative, and my children learned a huge amount not just about the assassination but also the global and domestic context.

And family content warning: the description of the assassination itself is *very* gory and many children may be disturbed by it. In fact, many adults. In fact I would be worried about anyone that was not disturbed.