“A Cruel and Shocking Act”, released in 2013 by author Philip Shenon, is about the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy in 1963. 

The investigative piece is primarily centered around the conspiracy behind the assassination, and proposes the decade old question “Was it an inside job?” Shenon brings light to the case, revealing new information withheld from not only the public, but also from the government’s leading investigative agencies like the CIA.

I began reading the book expecting just another JFK conspiracy story  about the “well, clearly, it was an inside job”, but the insider information, specifically about the gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, was really intriguing. Shenon had firsthand accounts from Oswald’s personal diaries, where Oswald speaks of his time in the Soviet Union.

The biggest intrigue for the book is the aforementioned “withheld information”, where it talks about the Warren Commission, a group of lawyers specifically assigned to investigate the assassination, who were appointed by former president Lyndon B. Johnson. I thought the book would have been just another retelling of the same surface level information you see everywhere else, but I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a true deep dive into the death and conspiracy of president John F. Kennedy.

Overall, I’d give the book a solid 3.5/5, since its a good book for anyone interested in the topic with intriguing details and a lot of heart put into it. However, I just don’t think I could give it a higher score for the fact that it is a rather niche topic, and certainly isn’t suitable for a majority of readers. However, if the book intrigues  you, or you have the slightest interest in the life of former president John F. Kennedy, I would totally recommend it.