Julian Read, a Texas political insider who delivered the first eyewitness account of President John F. Kennedy's assassination to the media, has authored a behind-the-­scenes history of the tragedy and its fifty-year legacy. In JFK's Final Hours in Texas, Read documents not only the immediate agony endured by the people in the epicenter of the tragedy but also the continuing experience of a wounded community recovering from its aftermath.

Beyond capturing the drama following the assassination, Read illuminates the previously overlooked consequences of the aborted portion of the trip. He also traces the long aftermath of the assassination, including the intense bitterness towards Dallas and Texas. And in what he calls "the long journey from anguish to reconciliation," Read details the struggle to create the Sixth Floor Museum in downtown Dallas, located in the space from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the assassination shots.

Read's very personal account surrounding the assassination and previously obscured facts of the president's Texas trip constitute a worthy addition to the record of a turbulent time.