Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Research NonfictionNamed one of the Top 3 JFK Books by Parade Magazine.
Named 1 of The 5 Essential Kennedy assassination books ever written by The Daily Beast.
Named one of the Top Nonfiction Books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.
In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered. On the same stage was a compelling cast of marauding gangsters, swashbuckling politicos, unsung civil rights heroes, and a stylish millionaire anxious to save his doomed city.
Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis ingeniously explore the swirling forces that led many people to warn President Kennedy to avoid Dallas on his fateful trip to Texas. Breathtakingly paced, DALLAS 1963 presents a clear, cinematic, and revelatory look at the shocking tragedy that transformed America. Countless authors have attempted to explain the assassination, but no one has ever bothered to explain Dallas-until now.
With spellbinding storytelling, Minutaglio and Davis lead us through intimate glimpses of the Kennedy family and the machinations of the Kennedy White House, to the obsessed men in Dallas who concocted the climate of hatred that led many to blame the city for the president's death. Here at long last is an accurate understanding of what happened in the weeks and months leading to John F. Kennedy's assassination. DALLAS 1963 is not only a fresh look at a momentous national tragedy but a sobering reminder of how radical, polarizing ideologies can poison a city-and a nation.
Review
"Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis's DALLAS 1963 is a brilliantly written, haunting eulogy to John F. Kennedy. By exposing the hatred aimed at our 35th president, the authors demonstrates that America--not just Lee Harvey Oswald--was ultimately responsible for his death. Every page is an eye opener. Highly recommended!"--Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University and author of Cronkite
Review
"All the great personalities of Dallas during the assassination come alive in this superb rendering of a city on a roller coaster into disaster. History has been waiting fifty years for this book."--Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear
Review
"Minutaglio and Davis capture in fascinating detail the creepiness that shamed Dallas in 1963."--Gary Cartwright, author and contributing editor at Texas Monthly
Review
"In this harrowing, masterfully-paced depiction of a disaster waiting to happen, Minutaglio and Davis examine a prominent American city in its now-infamous moment of temporary insanity. Because those days of partisan derangement look all too familiar today, DALLAS 1963 isn't just a gripping narrative-it's also a somber cautionary tale."--Robert Draper, contributor, New York Times Magazine and author of Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives
Review
"The authors skillfully marry a narrative of the lead-up to the fateful day with portrayals of the Dixiecrats, homophobes, John Birchers, hate-radio spielers, and the 'superpatriots' who were symptomatic of the paranoid tendency in American politics."--Harold Evans, author of The American Century
Review
"After fifty years, it's a challenge to fashion a new lens with which to view the tragic events of November 22, 1963--yet Texans [Minutaglio and Davis] pull it off brilliantly."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
"Chilling... The authors make a compelling, tacit parallel to today's running threats by extremist groups."--Kirkus
Review
"A thoughtful look at the political and social environment that existed in Dallas at the time of the president's election... a climate, the authors persuasively argue, of unprecedented turmoil and hatred."--Booklist
Review
andquot;With Texas-sized ambition and a touch of flair, Edward Miller taps the fascinating history of a surprisingly understudied place--Dallas, the and#39;Athens of the Southwestand#39;--to reorient our understanding of Americaand#39;s Republican Right. Out of the heated warfare that divided this cityandrsquo;s ultra- and moderate conservatives during the 1950s and 1960s emerged a pragmatic, potent, and anxious Republicanism that would capture the south in the 1970s and the nation in the years that followed. Packed full with colorful characters and surprising turning points, rich with historical insight yet pertinent to today, Nut Country is a book that students of U.S. (not just Texas!) history need to digest in order to appreciate why the and#39;Big Dand#39;sand#39; brand of politics has long held sway.andquot;
Review
andquot;If you want to read a riveting account of how the Republican Party became conservative after World War II, pick up a copy of Edward H. Millerand#39;s Nut Country. What makes this journey into political history so captivating is the local story of Dallas. From the pews of the First Baptist Church to the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel, Miller walks his readers vividly through the webs of family ties, social rituals, and political brokering through which locals participated in establishing a spectrum of conservative positions rather than a set ideological stance. Be prepared to have your definition of and#39;conservativeand#39; broadened by the fine research of this book.andquot;
Review
andquot;Phoenix, Orange County, and even bucolic Sharon, Connecticut can all lay claim to being foundational places in the making of modern conservatism. Edward Miller moves our sights to the Lone Star state.andnbsp;He makes a bold and convincing claim that if you want to understand the conservative movement, we have to reckon with Dallas, Texas: and#39;Nut Country.and#39; Featuring a memorable cast of characters--H. L. Hunt and General Edwin Walker not the least among them--Millerand#39;s book reveals how conservatives used racial politics in Dallas to change the fortunes, forever after, of the American right and the Republican Party.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Miller painstakingly details how a combination of newfound wealth (and a desire to hold on to it), a sudden rise of the middle class (which allowed for a single breadwinner and freed wives to dabble in politics), and the need for new residents to assimilate resulted in a highly conservative political stance riddled with deep-seated racism and and#39;conspiratorialand#39; John Bircher thinking. Millerandrsquo;s outstanding research allows him to weave a number of parallel stories, most notably his portrayal of the role of women working behind the scenes to enact this political shift. An insightful examination of a political shift that endures to this day.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered. On the same stage was a compelling cast of marauding gangsters, swashbuckling politicos, unsung civil rights heroes, and a stylish millionaire anxious to save his doomed city.
Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis ingeniously explore the swirling forces that led many people to warn President Kennedy to avoid Dallas on his fateful trip to Texas. Breathtakingly paced, Dallas 1963 presents a clear, cinematic, and revelatory look at the shocking tragedy that transformed America. Countless authors have attempted to explain the assassination, but no one has ever bothered to explain Dallas-until now.
With spellbinding storytelling, Minutaglio and Davis lead us through intimate glimpses of the Kennedy family and the machinations of the Kennedy White House, to the obsessed men in Dallas who concocted the climate of hatred that led many to blame the city for the president's death. Here at long last is an accurate understanding of what happened in the weeks and months leading to John F. Kennedy's assassination. Dallas 1963 is not only a fresh look at a momentous national tragedy but a sobering reminder of how radical, polarizing ideologies can poison a city-and a nation.
Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction
Named one of the Top 3 JFK Books by Parade Magazine.
Named 1 of The 5 Essential Kennedy assassination books ever written by The Daily Beast.
Named one of the Top Nonfiction Books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.
Synopsis
Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction
Named one of the Top 3 JFK Books by Parade Magazine.
Named 1 of The 5 Essential Kennedy assassination books ever written by The Daily Beast.
Named one of the Top Nonfiction Books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews.
In the months and weeks before the fateful November 22nd, 1963, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H. L. Hunt; the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, W.A. Criswell; and the media mogul Ted Dealey, who raucously confronted JFK and whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered. On the same stage was a compelling cast of marauding gangsters, swashbuckling politicos, unsung civil rights heroes, and a stylish millionaire anxious to save his doomed city.
Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis ingeniously explore the swirling forces that led many people to warn President Kennedy to avoid Dallas on his fateful trip to Texas. Breathtakingly paced, DALLAS 1963 presents a clear, cinematic, and revelatory look at the shocking tragedy that transformed America. Countless authors have attempted to explain the assassination, but no one has ever bothered to explain Dallas--until now.
With spellbinding storytelling, Minutaglio and Davis lead us through intimate glimpses of the Kennedy family and the machinations of the Kennedy White House, to the obsessed men in Dallas who concocted the climate of hatred that led many to blame the city for the president's death. Here at long last is an accurate understanding of what happened in the weeks and months leading to John F. Kennedy's assassination. DALLAS 1963 is not only a fresh look at a momentous national tragedy but a sobering reminder of how radical, polarizing ideologies can poison a city--and a nation.
Synopsis
If there was a city most likely to host the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Dallas was it. Kennedy himself recognized Dallasand#8217;s special and extreme nature, saying to Jackie in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, and#147;Weand#8217;re heading into nut country today.and#8221; Edward H. Miller makes the persuasive case in this lucid and insightful book that the ultraconservative faction of todayand#8217;s Republican Party is a product specifically of the political climate of Dallas in the 1950s and early 1960s, which was marked by apocalyptic language, conspiracy theories, and absolutist thought and rhetoric. Miller shows not only that the influential ultraconservative figures in Dallas fomented religious and racial extremism but that the arc of politics bent ever rightward, as otherwise moderate local Republicans were pressured to move away from the center. This faction promoted the creation of the national Republican Partyand#8217;s and#147;Southern Strategy,and#8221; which reversed the partyand#8217;s historical position on civil rights. This strategy, often credited to Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater in the wake of the crises of the 1960s, has its origins instead in the racial and religious beliefs of extremists in this volatile time and place. Dallas is the root of it all.
Synopsis
On the morning of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy told Jackie as they started for Dallas, andldquo;Weandrsquo;re heading into nut country today.andrdquo; That dayandrsquo;s events ultimately obscured and revealed just how right he was: Oswald was a lone gunman, but the city that surrounded him was full of people who hated Kennedy and everything he stood for, led by a powerful group of ultraconservatives who would eventually remake the Republican party in their own image.
In Nut Country, Edward H. Miller tells the story of that transformation, showing how a group of influential far-right businessmen, religious leaders, and political operatives developed a potent mix of hardline anticommunism, biblical literalism, and racism to generate a violent populismandmdash;and widespread power. Though those figures were seen as extreme in Texas and elsewhere, mainstream Republicans nonetheless found themselves forced to make alliances, or tack to the right on topics like segregation. As racial resentment came to fuel the national Republican partyandrsquo;s divisive but effective andldquo;Southern Strategy,andrdquo; the power of the extreme conservatives rooted in Texas only grew.
Drawing direct lines from Dallas to DC, Millerand#39;s captivating history offers a fresh understanding of the rise of the new Republican Party and the apocalyptic language, conspiracy theories, and ideological rigidity that remain potent features of our politics today.
About the Author
Bill Minutaglio has been published in the
New York Times,
Esquire,
Newsweek,
Texas Monthly, and the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A professor at the University of Texas at Austin, he worked at the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, and San Antonio Express-News. He has written acclaimed books about George W. Bush, Molly Ivins, Alberto Gonzales, and America's greatest industrial disaster. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Steven L. Davis is the author of two highly praised books on Texas, and his work has appeared in several magazines and journals. Davis is a curator at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos, which holds the literary papers of Cormac McCarthy and many other writers. He lives in New Braunfels, Texas.