Dallas 1963

Starred review from June 24, 2013
After 50 years, it’s a challenge to fashion a new lens with which to view the tragic events of Nov. 22, 1963—yet Texans Minutaglio (City On Fire) and Davis (Texas Literary Outlaws) pull it off brilliantly. The assassination in Dealey Plaza marks the end of their thrilling story, which traces three years of increasing militant extremism in Dallas, beginning even before Kennedy’s election. While many are familiar with the assault on U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in the city a month before the murder of the president, the November 1960 mob that swarmed native son and then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife is even more disturbing. The environment of hate is chillingly evoked, centered on radical ex-general Edwin Walker and billionaire H.L. Hunt. The toxic atmosphere extended to Washington, where J.F.K.’s Medicare legislation was vehemently opposed by some. The venom makes the impending tragedy seem inevitable, and though others have made dramatic use of the prophetic statements from J.F.K. himself, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and others just before the shooting, few have employed them to better effect. Photos. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management.

May 1, 2013

Texas-based authors Davis and Minutaglio portray Dallas at the time of Kennedy's assassination as seething with political extremists of every stripe, along with (darkly) colorful characters from strippers to billionaires.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2013

Not everyone in 1963 Dallas hated John F. Kennedy, but unfortunately the power brokers there who controlled politics, the media, and business did. In this absorbing account, Minutaglio (Sch. of Journalism, Univ. of Texas at Austin; First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty) and Davis (Witcliff Collections, Texas State Univ., San Marcos; J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind) reveal how those such as billionaire oil man H.L. Hunt; the Rev. Wallie Amos Criswell of the Dallas First Baptist Church; Ted Dealey, editor of the Dallas Morning News; GOP congressman Bruce Alger; and Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker, united by their hatred of liberals, socialism, communism, and civil rights, welcomed right-wing radical movements, reinforced segregation, and stirred up contempt for the president. Together, they fanned the anger of their legions and made 1963 Dallas a city that Kennedy had been warned by Adlai Stevenson and Lyndon Johnson not to visit. However, not all of Dallas's leaders were against JFK. The authors portray Stanley Marcus, manager of the Neiman Marcus department store, sympathetically as a wealthy man who worked hard to bring integration and the arts to Dallas. The Rev. H. Rhett James and Juanita Craft of the NAACP toiled tirelessly for civil rights despite recurring death threats against them. VERDICT This engrossing narrative vividly captures the tensions in the Kennedy-Dallas crucible from 1960 until the president's death and will grip readers interested in the roots of Kennedy's political challenges and his assassination.--KH

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
In a chronological, episodic narrative that grows somewhat tedious yet chilling, Minutaglio (City on Fire: The Explosion That Devastated a Texas Town and Ignited a Historic Legal Battle, 2004, etc.) and Davis (J. Frank Dobie, 2009, etc.) unearth the various fringe elements rampant in Dallas in the three years (from January 1960 to November 1963) preceding John F. Kennedy's assassination. These anti-communist and racist groups were essentially sanctioned by officials and created a dangerous climate for the president and first lady during their visit on November 22, 1963. Indeed, Kennedy had been warned not to come, especially after the violent reception of U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson by Dallas crowds several weeks before. "Super-patriots" like Gen. Edwin A. Walker, formerly enlisted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in helping integrate Little Rock Central High School, had made an about-face and grown stridently pro-segregationist, distributing Wanted for Treason posters at the time of JFK's visit; billionaire oilman H.L. Hunt was bankrolling right-wing groups; Frank McGehee was organizing a National Indignation Convention; and publisher Ted Dealey, whose paper the Dallas Morning News routinely attacked the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, ran an incendiary full-page advertisement from Bernard Weissman's American Fact-Finding Mission on the day Kennedy arrived in Dallas. In this xenophobic, anti-liberal, anti-East Coast atmosphere, Lee Harvey Oswald purchased a mail-order rifle, which he tried out first by shooting at Gen. Walker through a window of his home. Minutaglio and Davis alternate their doomsday scenario with chronicles of the upbeat attempts at integrating and liberalizing Dallas--e.g., international marketing efforts by showman Stanley Marcus (of Neiman Marcus) and New Hope Baptist Church pastor H. Rhett James' engineering of Martin Luther King Jr.'s visit to the city. Despite the calendar slog, the authors make a compelling, tacit parallel to today's running threats by extremist groups.

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August 1, 2013
Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination, this fine book proves that there is always something new to be said about that much-discussed subject. The authors look at neither the assassination itself nor its aftermath but at the years leading up to Kennedy's visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963. By the time Kennedy arrived, the authors argue, Dallas was one small step away from political and racial chaos, having been for many years the focal point for increasingly vocal and violent debates about civil rights, integration of schools and businesses, and the perceived Communist conspiracy that threatened the American way of life. The authors look at some of the key players in this environment, including Major General Edwin A. Walker, fervent believer in the Communist conspiracy, and billionaire oil tycoon H. L. Hunt. This isn't, it must be stressed, a book about a conspiracy to murder the president. Instead, it's a thoughtful look at the political and social environment that existed in Dallas at the time of the president's election and at the time of his 1963 visita climate, the authors persuasively argue, of unprecedented turmoil and hatred.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)