Critical summaries of books and articles

    Over the next several months (beginning in August 2001) I will be posting a series of "critical summaries" of various books, chapters, and articles related to the JFK assassination. The purpose of these brief analyses is be to give readers a preliminary feeling abut the worth of the contribution, where "worth" means the degree of enlightenment it brings to the case. This criterion does not necessarily mean "importance" in the usual JFK sense, where a book can be considered important because it attracts a great deal of attention to the assassination even if it does not directly help understand it. By that standards, for example, Oliver Stone's JFK film would have to be considered very important because it created a great deal of interest, but it was not "worth" a lot because it was so flawed from beginning to end that it misoriented nearly everyone who saw it. Consequently, it is hard to say whether it helped or hurt in the long run.
    Each critical summary will deal with a minimum of three basic aspects of the contribution: its thesis, the evidence it uses to support that thesis, and whether the evidence does the job. Related topics will be discussed as appropriate. Earlier summaries will be expanded from time to time. As always, thoughtful comments are appreciated. As time permits, I will try to post them with the summary. The summaries will be arranged by date of their publication.

Books
Michael Collins Piper's Final Judgment (1993)
    Piper's response
Stewart Galanor's Cover-Up (1998)
    Response to Essay #16, by Stewart Galanor
    Partial response to Essay #16, by Rex Bradford
    Response to Rex Bradford and Stewart Galanor, by Joel Grant
    Response to Joel Grant, by Milicent Cranor
    Response to Milicent Cranor, by Joel Grant
Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest
George Michael Evica's And We are All Mortal
Stewart Galanor's Cover-Up (simplified critique)
David Lifton's Best Evidence
Oliver Stone's JFK film
Gerald Posner's Case Closed

Articles
Chapter 44 of Gary Wean's There's A FISH In The COURTHOUSE (1987)
Chapter entitled "Dallas" from Michael Milan's The Squad (1989)
Mark Lane's Oswald Innocent? A Lawyer's Brief
Vincent Salandria (various)
Martin Schotz (various)
Charles Drago's presentation at the 1993 Providence Conference