The shots that killed President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 were fired from the sixth floor of a nondescript warehouse at the edge of Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. That floor in the Texas School Book Depository became a museum exhibit in 1989 and was designated part of a National Historic Landmark District in 1993. This book recounts the slow and painful process by which a city and a nation came to terms with its collective memory of the assassination and its aftermath. Stephen Fagin begins Assassination and Commemoration by retracing the events that culminated in Lee Harvey Oswald’s shots at the presidential motorcade. He vividly describes the volatile political climate of midcentury Dallas as well as the shame that haunted the city for decades after the assassination. The book highlights the decades-long work of people determined to create a museum that commemorates a president and recalls the drama and heartbreak of November 22, 1963. Fagin narrates the painstaking day-to-day work of cultivating the support of influential citizens and convincing boards and committees of the importance of preservation and interpretation. Today, The Sixth Floor Museum helps visitors to interpret the depository and Dealey Plaza as sacred ground and a monument to an unforgettable American tragedy. One of the most popular historic sites in Texas, it is a place of quiet reflection, of edification for older Americans who remember the Kennedy years, and of education for the large and growing number of younger visitors unfamiliar with the events the museum commemorates. Like the museum itself, Fagin’s book both carefully studies a community’s confrontation with tragedy and explores the ways we preserve the past.

The shots that killed President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 were fired from the sixth floor of a nondescript warehouse at the edge of Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. That floor in the Texas School Book Depository became a museum exhibit in 1989 and was designated part of a National Historic Landmark District in 1993. This book recounts the slow and painful process by which a city and a nation came to terms with its collective memory of the assassination and its aftermath. Stephen Fagin begins Assassination and Commemoration by retracing the events that culminated in Lee Harvey Oswald’s shots at the presidential motorcade. He vividly describes the volatile political climate of midcentury Dallas as well as the shame that haunted the city for decades after the assassination. The book highlights the decades-long work of people determined to create a museum that commemorates a president and recalls the drama and heartbreak of November 22, 1963. Fagin narrates the painstaking day-to-day work of cultivating the support of influential citizens and convincing boards and committees of the importance of preservation and interpretation. Today, The Sixth Floor Museum helps visitors to interpret the depository and Dealey Plaza as sacred ground and a monument to an unforgettable American tragedy. One of the most popular historic sites in Texas, it is a place of quiet reflection, of edification for older Americans who remember the Kennedy years, and of education for the large and growing number of younger visitors unfamiliar with the events the museum commemorates. Like the museum itself, Fagin’s book both carefully studies a community’s confrontation with tragedy and explores the ways we preserve the past.

Examines how Israeli society has commemorated Yitzhak Rabin.

Secret Service agent Clint Hill reveals the stories behind the iconic images of the five tragic days surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in this 60th anniversary edition of the New York Times bestseller. On November 22, 1963, three shots were fired in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the world stopped for four days. For an entire generation, it was the end of an age of innocence. That evening, a photo ran on the front pages of newspapers across the world, showing a Secret Service agent jumping on the back of the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to protect the President and Mrs. Kennedy. That agent was Clint Hill. Now Hill commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of the tragedy with this stunning book containing more than 150 photos, each accompanied by his incomparable insider account of those terrible days. A story that has taken Hill half a century to tell, this is a “riveting, stunning narrative” (Herald & Review, Illinois) of personal and historical scope. Besides the unbearable grief of a nation and the monumental consequences of the event, the death of JFK was a personal blow to a man sworn to protect the first family, and who knew, from the moment the shots rang out in Dallas, that nothing would ever be the same.

Examines how Israeli society has commemorated Yitzhak Rabin.

Gathered for the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, this is the complete "New York Times" coverage of the days that changed America forever.