JFK for a New Generation-P

Hunt, project director and chief curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, remembers well that awful day in Dealey Plaza 33 years ago, but she worries about those who, born after 1960, can only relate to those four days in November as history. Though she takes us through familiar ground, Hunt elevates the details and provides a framework to judge why JFK's life and memory matter so much to the American psyche. Heavily illustrated with contemporary photos and illustrations, the book creates a collective memory of the youngest U.S. president. Kennedy, his promise cut short, became myth and symbol. That day ended our national innocence and changed forever the way we look at the presidency, politics and the media. What Kennedy might have become is at the heart of this tribute. Kennedy's funeral was the country's funeral, and those four days left us with images of youth and glamour, images that today are more real than the truth of Kennedy's thousand days in office. In spite of academic revisionists and such recent controversies as Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, Hunt's book stands as a powerful attempt to place a larger-than-life figure in the context of his own and the nation's life. (Nov.)