On November 22, 1963, science and aerospace reporter Hugh Aynesworth had the day off. He was not among the cadre of reporters and photographers assigned to cover the Dallas visit of President John F. Kennedy. Within forty-eight hours, however, Aynesworth had witnessed the assassination of the president, the arrest of the assassin, and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.
Now more than fifty years later, November 22, 1963: WITNESS TO HISTORY recounts events that have passed into memory and controversy-and sets the record straight.
In his intriguing behind-the-scenes narrative, Aynesworth recreates the harrowing hours following the president's death, builds portraits of the assassin's mother and wife, and engages readers as eyewitnesses to the frenetic aftermath. “The rifle shots had barely stopped echoing over Dealey Plaza that Friday afternoon a half century ago before untruths, both innocent and deliberate, began to distort the record and creep uncorrected in the world's consciousness.” From the perspective of fifty years and with an investigative reporter's passion for facts, Aynesworth dispels false accounts and reveals the truth about those who sought to profit from their fortuitous (or manufactured) connection to the assassination.
