BOOK REVIEW:
NATIONAL NIGHTMARE
ON SIX FEET OF FILM:
MR. ZAPRUDER'S HOME MOVIE
AND THE MURDER OF
PRESIDENT KENNEDY
AUTHOR: RICHARD B. TRASK
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ANOTHER FIRST-RATE EFFORT BY RICHARD B. TRASK...
ALL YOU COULD EVER WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE
ZAPRUDER FILM IS IN THIS BOOK.
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I love reading Richard Trask's books about the JFK assassination; and this one, published in late October 2005, is certainly no exception. It's very informative and definitely a worthy addition to anyone's collection of written materials surrounding the shocking murder of President John Kennedy in November of 1963.
"National Nightmare On Six Feet Of Film: Mr. Zapruder's Home Movie And The Murder Of President Kennedy" is a softcover volume containing 392 pages packed with just about every conceivable piece of information revolving around the infamous 26-second color motion-picture film taken by Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963, which is a film which shows, in all its morbid detail, the assassination of an American President in broad daylight on a city street in Dallas, Texas.
Mr. Trask details the full history of the film and provides a good deal of background and biographical information on Mr. Zapruder, an ordinary Dallas businessman, born in Russia, who, by pure happenstance and coincidence, turned out to be the amateur filmmaker whose name will forever be associated with the death of JFK.
But, if it weren't for the prodding of his secretary, Lillian Rogers (who encouraged Zapruder to go back home and retrieve his 8mm Bell-&-Howell movie camera shortly before the President's motorcade arrived in Dealey Plaza), that brief and awful 26 seconds in history would probably have never been captured through Mr. Zapruder's lens.
Like Richard Trask's other books on the JFK assassination which focus attention on the photographic aspect of the tragedy, the text of "National Nightmare" is ever-readable, easily-understood, and refreshingly-non-biased when it comes to taking a "Conspiracy vs. No Conspiracy" position by the author. Mr. Trask lays out the facts and leaves it at that.
This book's endnotes/footnotes are all positioned at the back of the book in one separate section, so as to not clutter up the main text of the volume. (So keeping two bookmarks handy is recommended, because a lot of interesting info can be gleaned from some of these endnotes too.)
One big surprise to this writer when perusing this book was seeing a COLOR version of the Robert Croft photograph printed on Page 67 (within a 16-page spread of mostly all-color photos and Zapruder Film frames). I had never seen the Croft picture in color previously. And it's an excellent-quality print of that famous amateur photo that I found in this volume, too. The picture is needle-sharp and the color is virtually perfect.
By the way, the Croft photo [shown above; click on the picture for an even bigger view], depicts the President's limousine on Elm Street, just after the car has made its sharp left turn from Houston Street in front of the Texas School Book Depository. It was taken at a point equivalent to Zapruder frame #161 (per this book's text and captions), which is just about the time the first gunshot was being fired in Dealey Plaza.
Other highly-recommended publications authored by Richard B. Trask (centering on the photography of President Kennedy's assassination) ..... "Pictures Of The Pain" (1994) and "That Day In Dallas" (1998). The latter is a condensed version of the former, focusing attention on just three of the photographers who took pictures in Dallas on the day JFK was killed (Cecil Stoughton, James Altgens, and Jim Murray).*
* = Although condensed into a smaller number of pages than that of its predecessor, "That Day In Dallas" does contain "revised and enlarged" material throughout its limited number of chapters. And the specific photographs represented within that volume are unrivaled in their clarity and quality of physical presentation, in this writer's personal opinion.
I truly enjoyed both of those books, and was very glad to see "That Day In Dallas" come out a few years after "POTP", because "That Day" provides a larger-print format for many excellent-quality assassination-related photographs, including several pictures you're not likely to see in any other book on the subject.
As a companion piece to "National Nightmare", I would also recommend highly the MPI Home Video DVD "Image Of An Assassination: A New Look At The Zapruder Film" (released in the summer of 1998), which contains four digital versions of the entire 26-second Zapruder Film in various formats, including zoomed-in variants and a previously-unseen widescreen version of the movie, which includes the imagery between the sprocket holes from Mr. Zapruder's camera-original film.
That DVD also contains some valuable and collectible bonus video programming, including interviews with Zapruder associates, as well as the March 1975 "Good Night America" program (hosted by Geraldo Rivera), during which U.S. audiences first saw the horrifying images of Mr. Zapruder's movie.
The DVD also has a crystal-clear video copy of the live interview that Abraham Zapruder gave on WFAA-TV just two hours after he had filmed the assassination. [That 11/22/63 WFAA interview with Zapruder can be seen in its entirety HERE.]
Many of the above-mentioned items from that "Image Of An Assassination" DVD are also referenced by Mr. Trask throughout the well-written pages of "National Nightmare".
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A CLOSING WORD:
With the publication of "National Nightmare On Six Feet Of Film", Richard Trask has admirably filled in yet another in a seemingly-never-ending series of pieces of subject matter associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Nowhere can be found a more detailed and fact-based history of Abraham Zapruder's historic film than that which resides within these 392 pages.
David Von Pein
January 2006
July 2009
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