Lear's Italy: In the Footsteps of Edward Lear

Book Description

Edward Lear is best known throughout the world as the author of The Book of Nonsense. But Lear was also one of the leading artists of his time and an intrepid traveller whose passion for Italy lasted a lifetime; indeed he was often the very first Englishman to have visited some of the remoter areas and wrote several travelogues. Drawing from Lear's travelogues on the Environs of Rome and Southern Italy, Lear's in depth diaries and copious letters, expert Michael Montgomery traces Lear's footsteps between 1837-1897, offering a unique expert insight into the life of a truly remarkable character, who lived an extraordinary life, during a critical period in the history of Italy.

Customer Reviews:

Facinating glimpse into a 19th century life.......2006-12-31

Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (12/06)

Michael Montgomery's "Lear's Italy" is like a time travel machine - it transports the reader into a world both really familiar and really foreign at the same time. His narrative of Edward Lear's life and travel in Italy from 1837 to 1888 is heavily supported by excerpts from Lear's letters, diaries and travelogues and complemented by numerous small sketches made by Lear during his time in Italy.

Edward Lear was one of the leading artists of the Victorian era, best known for his work "The Book of Nonsense." An accomplished writer and illustrator, he moved to Italy at the age of 25 and he spent most of his life there apart from a period during the `Risorgimento' (Italian unification). He died in 1888 and was buried in San Remo. His work and travels took him to some of the best known places in Italy as well as into some of the most remote ones. He often traveled on foot or on horseback, interacting with local people and later describing them, their customs and their land in great detail. Some of the descriptions read like they were written yesterday, such as this charming description of his stay in Rapallo, a `dirty and dull place': "Poste Hotel - ill-tempered hostess, particularly filthy room & nasty house. Ordered dinner& went out with G., but it rained, & I could hardly do anything. Bay of Rapallo dead & shut up. Women make lace. All is contrast to the La Spezia province. Dinner not very bad. Then insisted on, & got, a better room, & came to bed at 8. No sleep; fleas, bugs, gnats, ants, noisy geese, fidgety sea, lightning all night, crying child, & all sorts of disturbances..." If you've traveled some, I am certain that this description - well, maybe without the fleas - could have described many a hotel stay you have had; yet it was written in 1860's.

And another one, which really made me smile, this time talking about his dislike for Venice: "Now, as you will ask me my impressions of Venice, I may as well shock you a good thumping shock at once by saying I don't care a bit for it & never wish to see it again... Canaletto's pictures please me far better, inasmuch as I cannot in them smell these most stinking canals. Ugh!" Whereas I love Venice greatly and can not agree with Lear on his dislike of it, the smelly canals there have not improved since his visit in the late 1860's.

Other parts of Italy pleased Lear far more, as is clearly evident from this vivid description of Lake Varese, visited shortly after Lear's stay in Venice: "Those beautiful bright villas - those beautiful scenes, with the Lake below! And, spite of its small repute as an Italian Lake, Varese has some qualities wanting to all the rest: its endless delicate gradation of multiplicity of verdure - slopes of green - & far away bits of level mixed with shining water - long lines of distant blue plain - deep or faint, & grade beyond grade of more faintly delineated soft hills or more decided ridges, with Alpine snow above... the tall Lombard towers (their bells so fine in tone) - the rich green of the walnut, the almost yellow acacia - the grey willows, olives, poplars or aspens - the thick oak copses, where nightingales sing always - the smooth undulation & declivities of turf - the cheerful hayfields, the many winding paths - the glittering villages, & single silvery villas or cottages or chapels - the winding bright streamlets - fig, almond, pomegranate, corn, mulberry for foreground - who would not rejoice in the landscape of Lake Varese?"

If you are looking for a book with a strong plot and a fast moving, exciting story, "Lear's Italy" will not be your cup of tea. If, on the other hand, you are one of those people who love good writing for its sake alone, if you can close your eyes and see Lake Varese clearly after reading Lear's description of it, then I bet this book will be a great delight to you. I would gladly recommend it to dreamers, artists, travelers and armchair travelers everywhere.

Amazon.com

The situation in St. Petersburg was growing more and more tense. The People's Revolution had begun by overthrowing the corrupt Tsarist regime in March 1917, but the workers and the peasants felt the revolution had much farther to go. Tired of fighting a war that meant little to them, the soldiers also grew restless: "When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the power to the Soviets, then we'll know we have something to fight for, and we'll fight for it!"

Lenin pressed the Bolsheviks to seize power. On the night of October 24, an organized mass of workers, soldiers, peasants, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace. On the following day, at the opening of the second Congress of Soviets, Trotsky announced the overthrow of the provisional government. Counterrevolutionary forces marched on the capital, but the Revolutionary Army triumphed. After all, "[t]his was their battle, for their world; the officers in command were elected by them. For the moment that incoherent multiple will was one will."

In Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed tells the story of Red October and the Russian revolution from a unique, firsthand perspective. Reed, an American journalist, was on assignment in Russia for The Masses--then the principal radical journal in the United States--and spent his days walking the streets, reading and collecting handbills, newspapers, and posters, and talking to people. As a result, Ten Days crackles with energetic immediacy. At its best moments it reads like a novel: Reed recounts conversations and arguments, details political machinations, and speculates on personal motives. Though this is no mere piece of propaganda, Reed's enthusiasm for the revolution infuses the text (some readers may be put off by Reed's florid prose), casting each counterrevolutionary act in a negative light. Helpful notes flesh out the background for those less familiar with the preceding events and render this a solid work of history. Ten Days That Shook the World is a stirring account of a stirring event. --Sunny Delaney

Book Description

The basis for the Academy Award–winning 1981 film Reds, Reed's classic eyewitness account captures the opening days of the Russian Revolution. His passionately involved narrative describes the fall of the provisional government, the assault on the Winter Palace, Lenin's seizure of power, and other tumultuous events. "Brilliant and entertaining." — The New York Times Book Review. 16 illustrations.

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This book is a slice of intensified history-history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets.

Customer Reviews:

One of a kind.......2007-09-10

This book is one of the most biased books ever written, but this shouldnt be taken as a criticism. This is one of the those history books that was written by someone that was actually there at the time things were happening, and the author made it clear that he was not trying to present "both sides" of the story. He was going to present the "people's side" (at least at that specific time). You dont have to be a communist to enjoy this book. In fact, you can compare the dream the people had at that time with what they actually got later. Beautifully written, this book makes you live the revolution. As you read it, you find yourself walking down the same street with the people at that time and listening to them talk and argue and even fight. Thanks to Reed's amazing style you can visualize the whole thing.

THE HEROIC AGE OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION .......2006-11-29

John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, epitomized the best of the pre-World War I bourgeois radicals. Unlike the vast majority of his Class and class he cast his fate with the working people and oppressed of America at a time when the dominant left bourgeois movement- the Progressive movement- was busy applying band aids to the increasingly inequitable capitalist system. The radical movement is always in need, sometimes desperately in need, of intellectuals to tell its side of the story. Despite some exceptions, like Reed, the intellectuals then, as now, either stand on the sidelines or at most acted as `fellow travelers' to the movement. Reed on the contrary put all his energies into the movement. As a journalist he sought out all the radical hotspots of his time starting with his coverage of the Mexican Revolution, through the various workers' strikes of the 1910's in America culminating in his coverage of the heroic period of the Russian Revolution. His journalistic account of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Ten Days That Shook the World, stands even today as one of the best eyewitness accounts of that turbulent time in Russia. Reed had access to many elements of Russian society, from the revolutionatry workers quarters in Vyborg and Kronstadt to high society in the shadow of the Winter Palace, and mined those sources for his material. He brings the passion of the partisan in the best sense to his work.

If you want insights into the struggle for power from a central character in the fight then Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is must reading. If you want to know what the Bolshevik Revolution meant for the configuration of world geo-politcs them E.H. Carr's three volume study is for you. If you want to know what the various parties were up to in the period prior to the Bolshevik seizure of power then Sukhanov's Notes on the Revolution will provide a rather insightful guide. However, if you want to know how the revolutionary developments in 1917 affected various layers of society (and how they responded) then Reed is for you. Enough said.

How to get the most out of this great book.......2006-06-24

To appreciate this book, you have to understand what it is and what it isn't.

This is top-notch journalism, by someone with a lot of insight into what he was seeing, and a knack for turning up in all the right places. It gives you a vivid, unparalleled *flavor* of the Russian revolution of 1917, the first victorious working class revolution.

But it's still *journalism*. It's not an organized chronicle of what happened, beginning at the beginning and introducing events and ideas in a logical order. On top of that, Reed arrived in Russia at the climax of the revolution, after seven months of intense activity by an overwhelming cast of characters. If you read it too casually, it's like starting a textbook by reading the last chapter.

To get the most out of the book, I suggest reading Reed's introductory material carefully, probably returning to it more than once as you read the book. If you need more help, there's a good summary in the last two chapters of "Revolutionary Continuity: the Early Years" by Farrell Dobbs.

Your efforts will be well-rewarded. It really is great journalism.

For a definitive history, I highly recommend the widely acclaimed masterpiece, "History of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. If you like one book, you'll like the other. I promise. Please read my review. (Click on "See all my reviews" above.)

Some reviewers complained that Reed doesn't explain the revolution's shortcomings -- the Russian revolution obviously turned out badly in the long run. But not everyone agrees that the revolution was fatally flawed from the very beginning. I don't. It's hard to read Reed's book and believe it was anything but an authentic popular revolution. For what went wrong, I recommend "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky and "Lenin's Final Fight", a collection of Lenin's last writings.

Eye Witness Account - Recommended by Lenin.......2005-11-15

This is an excellent account of the Russian Revolution told in story form and should be included in your study of the Revolution. The author was an American journalist and active participant in the American Labor movement aiding strikers in Paterson, NJ. In 1919 he chaired the meeting which founded the Communist-Labour Party, later the Communist Party of the U.S.A.. There is no such thing as an "objective" and neutral study, all sides are bias, so this book should be read with the so called anti-communist accounts to balance this study out.

There are a lot of details and yet it is told in story form. I think the other book to read on this subject is the History of the Russian Revolution written by the source itself, Leon Trotsky. Also Trotsky's book, The Revolution Betrayed. Then you can go to writings of Lenin. I found a short book on a couple of essays by the German Socialist and contemporary of the Socialist movement, Rosa Luxemburg, is very significant as an analysis. In this she criticizes much of Lenin and Trotsky's centralization as opposed to opportunism and the disbanding of the Duma and so forth, an excellent read! There are also quite a few modern books on the Russian Revolution as Richard Piper and others. This book is an excellent place to start and should not be excluded in this study.

This book as scores of statements Reed took from the many of the Bolshevik - proletarian and the bourgeois newspapers, documents, announcements and decrees of Kerensky and the provincial government, short conversations with Bolsheviks, Cadets, Cossacks, Mensheviks, proletarians and bourgeois alike. What I found so helpful is that Reed, as an sort of neutral in between person, was able to interview many of the opposing sides.

A useful exposition of the October Revolution.......2005-02-10

John Reed's book, "Ten Days That Shook The World", presents a challenge to well-meaning scholars of the October Revolution everywhere. The continuing debate over comrade Reed's accounts of the events of the socialist triumph over the bourgeois Kerenskyite oligarchs has been overshadowed by the present-day temporary setback experienced by the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its struggle to resume its true and rightful place as the vanguard of the international proletariat. As Engels wrote in his classic work, "Materialism and the Apostasis of the 18th Brumaire" (Progress Press, Moscow, 1957), the inevitability of achieving a worker's state is far from a seamless upward trail, and will, from time to time encounter momentary challenges and obstacles thrown in the path of progess by counter-revolutionary and capitalist elements.

How does the proper historian view Reed's work? Clearly, as comrade V. I. Lenin wrote his original introduction to "Ten Days", Reed was at his best in reporting on the empirical reality of the proletarian movements inside Petrograd. As comrade Lenin and others later commented, Reed could be excused as a "revolutionary journalist" (a bourgeois conceit, of course) for failing to correctly observe the deviationism underlying the Plenkhavites and so-called moderate Socialist Revolutionaries, not to mention crypto-anarchists and other undisciplined romantic individualists. Reed erred in not uncovering the Menshevik centrist trend in the Russian Social Democratic movement, lead by Trotsky and Bukharin, arch-conspirators and chauvinists who were rightfully expelled from the Party in 1927. Indeed, it was with comradely restraint and generosity that comrade Lenin granted a state memorial to comrade Reed's memory....

Regrettably, truly objective scholarship has all but disappeared since the unfortunate events of the past decade. Perhaps the best critical analysis of the contradictions in Reed's works is found in comrade S.I. Klepov's monumental and enthralling six volume work, "Annals of the Sixth Comintern's Sub-Committee On Far Eastern Labor Relations in the Baikal-Irkutsk Regions (Progress Press, Moscow, 1937 (sadly, now out of print)), in which at page 708, he writes, "The American J. Reed fails to dialectically confront the errors of so-called moderates but in reality bourgeois roaders such as Zinoviev. He can be excused many of these faults due to his education in the infantile American labor movement and its inability to grasp such fundamental necessities as party discipline... As we know, "facts" are not the same as "truth." Shorn of the necessary empiro-criticism guided by the steady hand of the Party, Reed's "account" of the November revolution are but an empty shadow of the genuine proletariat victory." Truly such words were written on pages of gold!

Surely we cannot improve on comrade Klepov's correct analysis. Comrade Reed's work, while flawed, can be forgiven as a good and indulgent father excuses an errant but well-meaning child.

Five Days That Shook the World: The Battle for Seattle and Beyond

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Needs some balance, but believable.
Oooh That Smell
Eye of the Storm
Prescient book, given the Retaliatory Attack on America
Growing Consciousness, Growing Repression

Five Days That Shook the World: The Battle for Seattle and Beyond
Alexander Cockburn , and Jeffrey St. Clair
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 185984779X

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The 1999 World Trade Organization protests will forever be associated with violence. But, outside of Seattle, where the event has been debated ad infinitum, the cause, victims, and perpetrators of that violence have been lost to a haze of media-generated moments that simplified an inspired, multifaceted, and generally nonviolent event. Through eyewitness chronicles of the events in Seattle and demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, muckrakers Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, as well as a handful of other contributing journalists, vividly relive the opening salvos of a new radical movement in America. While they are understandably effusive about the success of the actions, which clearly placed the issues of anti-globalization and economic justice onto the national and international political agendas, the book's emphasis--and its impact--is on what they see as a national trend towards the violent criminalization of protest and the increasing use of paramilitary forces in law enforcement.

In Seattle, which was transformed from a street festival to a police state in a matter of hours, St. Clair mingles at the cafés and warehouses that acted as staging areas for direct actions, and walks the streets where dancing, drumming, and peaceful sit-ins were punctuated by shocking acts of police brutality--unprovoked attacks with rubber bullets and concussion grenades, a waitress pepper-sprayed while leaving her shift, her boyfriend beaten and arrested, copies of the Bill of Rights confiscated, Christmas carolers tear-gassed. In D.C., the police break into homes of opposition leaders, spy on their activities, pressure print shops to close, and make illegal sweep arrests. But Cockburn and St. Clair are not satisfied with excoriating the police; they also turn their vitriolic pens against those within the protest movement who aren't as radical as they, from labor unions to "establishment greens." The authors would have done better to devote the space to a more articulated explanation of exactly why they were protesting against the WTO than to causing divisiveness between those on the same side. --Lesley Reed

Book Description

It's been called the most intense popular uprising since the protests against the Vietnam War. In October 1999, fifty thousand citizens occupied the streets in a successful effort to shut the World Trade Organization's ministerial meeting. Trade unionists, environmentalists, human rights advocates and farmers converged on Seattle to denounce the new global economy. Street corners were occupied by irate French farmers, Earth First!ers locked themselves to hotel doors to prevent WTO delegates from exiting, the convention center was circled by a human chain, and black-clad anarchists roamed the streets, smashing the windows of Gap, Niketown, and the Bank of America. The Seattle cops responded fiercely, saturating the air with tear gas, attacking demonstrators with riot clubs, rubber bullets, and pepper spray. The street battle raged for three days. Six hundred people were arrested, held without lawyers at a local military base. But when the smoke and gas cleared, the protesters had prevailed: the WTO talks had collapsed. Five Days that Shook the World takes you onto the streets of Seattle with on-the-spot reporting and photographs. But it also looks at the broader issues raised by the protest: the secretive and undemocratic practice of the WTO, the trampling on rights to assembly and free speech by deploying the military to put down protest, and the menace to individual liberties of globalization and offshore government.

Customer Reviews:

Needs some balance, but believable........2005-06-15

My first read-through left me thinking "How biased. There's no way to back these ideas up." But that's the way it's supposed to be. A movement is about feelings and humans being; let the sociologists and labor economists debate the facts and figures.

The political bickering - St. Clair et al's pointed attacks on Sierra Club, Carl Pope, and especially labor leaders, seem out of joint with the solidarity aspect of a movement - but this is how it is. And this book could have been more a platform to assault political enemies both near and far, but stayed mostly on task.

Overall, there was a chaotic feel to the narrative, which accurately reflects the state of subsequent public dissents, most noteworthy the pathetic demonstration in Chicago in 2002.

To really understand all aspects of the movement, one needs to include another perspective. I recommend:

"Globalization and its Discontents" Joe Stiglitz - to understand the macro scale of these protests.

"Breaking Rank" by Norm Stamper - a police account of the Seattle riots, written by a progressive police chief in perhaps the most progressive city in the U.S.

Remember folks, Seattle was probably the one city in the U.S. (besides San Francisco) that would be willing to tolerate such large scale dissent - and it did not. There's a reason for that.

Oooh That Smell.......2003-11-14

The rebellion against global trade policies that erupted on the streets of Seattle was a warning shot heard round the world: transnational corporations and their political servants will be confronted by the people they seek to exploit. Other demostrations followed: in Quebec, Washington, Milan, Davos, and Cancun. The corporadoes have no place left to hide, no place left to hold their secret covens without hearing the voices of the growing global opposition. But there are no illusions here. This new global movement is taking root more firmly in Europe and the developing world than in the US, where its growth is stunted and suppressed by a reflexive loyalty to the Democratic Party, despite its descent into the darkness of neoliberalism. St. Clair's gripping diary of that week describes with chilling prescience the divisions in the movement between the traditional liberals and the new radicals, fed up with being spoonfed morsels by Democratic Party politicians whose real allegiance is to the same network of corporate fat cats who dreamed up the WTO in the first place. These fissures played out first in the 2000 election, when the labor unions and mainstream greens that chanted slogans of defiance in Seattle all came back into the plantation and supported the campaign of Al Gore, a chief architect of NAFTA and the WTO. Now, scared to death by the spectre of another Bush term, the divisions will become even more stark, the rationalizations of surrender more hysterical. This book is must reading for progressives, both for the history it describes and the future it predicts.

Eye of the Storm.......2002-06-17

A wonderful blend of first-hand, eye-witness reporting and even-handed analysis. Jeremy St. Clair's 40 page "Seatle Diary" alone makes the book worthy of reading. Perhaps the best piece of journalism to emerge from the growing body of Seatle stories. Two clips involving WTO delegates (one pounching a black lady in the face, another waving his revolver at a protestor baracade) utterly blew me away. And in the spirit of the lively and diverse protesters, the book is also funny at times, as when a South Central LA youth named Thomas replies to St. Clair's question, "Why are you here?" He answers: "I like turtles and I hate that ... Bill Gates." To which Sinclair replies, "Good enough for me." You won't be able to put the book down. It has a very genuine, honest and human feel. Along the way, you will run into Brower, the famous French cheese-maker Jose Bove, some interesting college professors, Sierra Club's Carl Pope, many of the so-called "anarchists" which every major media venue categorized all protestors as, and many other important people who turned out for the "Battle in Seatle." The book will not only give you a comprehensive understanding of the issues surrounding the protests and the subsequent media storm, it will also make you feel like you were there. St. Clair's writing is that good.

Prescient book, given the Retaliatory Attack on America.......2001-09-18

America had never seen anything like the mass movement that took over Seattle to confront the World Trade Organization in the fall of 2001: environmentalists, religious & human rights groups, farmers, civil rights organizations, ordinary people. They came with a message of peaceful protest. They were met with shock troops, billy clubs, rubber bullets and tear gas. 5 Days that Shook the World takes you onto the streets of Seattle and the protests in Washington, Philly and Los Angeles that followed during that remarkable year. But this book isn't about illusions or myths, but about the hard truths. St. Clair and Cockburn were eerily prescient in their prediction that the vaunted coalition of labor and greens would be difficult to hold together as the demands of political reality set in and as the corporate press and the government moved to counter and undermine the movement(s). Big labor and the big greens soon abandoned the cause by endorsing the campaign of pseudo-Democrat, Al Gore, the chief broker of NAFTA and the WTO treaties. Other leaders turned away from the protests following the bloody reprisals of the police in
Quebec and Genoa. But that doesn't mean the anti-globalization movement is dead. Cockburn and St. Clair point out the fakers, but they also show you where the true heart of the movement for global social and environmental justice beats. This book is a a much needed guide to what just may be the most important struggle of our times...

Growing Consciousness, Growing Repression.......2001-09-18

Within the growing literature of the anti-globalization movement is the book Five Days that Shook the World, which intimately puts you on the street for the events of N30, through St. Clair's Seattle Diary, the DC protests with JoAnn Wypejewski, and the Democratic National Convention in LA. In addition to the firsthand accounts by the people involved in the protests, the book chronicles the growing consciousness of the anti-globalization movement and the concurrent repression of the movement by the police state. This book is an excellent account of both the success of a movement that has unified people throughout the U.S. and world, including steel workers and environmental activists, and also shows how the heads of labor and the environmental movement had their own agenda during the Seattle protests and sold out those on the streets for a seat at the table with the WTO. The photographs by Sekula add a visual element to the work that complements the writing of St. Clair and Cockburn and gives a personal face to the fight against the WTO, as well as shows the facelessness of the jackboot state. Five Days that Shook the World is a vital narrative in the growing history of the anti-globalization movement and the authors are uncompromising in their analysis of where the movement stands, who betrayed the movement, and how the State has begun to work to limit the voices calling for an alternative to the WTO, IMF, and the destruction wreaked by global capitalism.

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Ten Days That Shook the World.

Manufacturer: Boni & Liveright
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000E6500U

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Ten Days That Shook the World

Manufacturer: Vintage Russian Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GSEW46

Sixty days that shook the West;: The fall of France, 1940

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Sixty days that shook the West;: The fall of France, 1940
Benoist-MeÌchin
Manufacturer: Putnam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Cnn Reports Seven Days That Shook the World

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Cnn Reports Seven Days That Shook the World
Stuart Loory , and Ann Imse
Manufacturer: Turner Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1878685112

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Ten Days That Shook The World
John Reed
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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This was followed by the dispersal of the Soviet at Kaluga. The Bolsheviki, having secured a majority in the Soviet, set free some political prisoners. With the sanction of the Government Commissar the Municipal Duma called in troops from Minsk, and bombarded the Soviet headquarters with artillery. The Bolsheviki yielded, but as they left the building Cossacks attacked them.

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Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 (Days That Shook the World)

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Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 (Days That Shook the World)
Jason Hook
Manufacturer: Raintree
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0739852345

The Kennedy Assassination: November 22, 1963 (Days That Shook the World)

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"Beyond The Magic Bullet" -- The Closest We're Likely To Ever Get To A Perfect Duplication Of The "Single-Bullet Theory"

The Kennedy Assassination: November 22, 1963 (Days That Shook the World)
Liz Gogerly
Manufacturer: Raintree
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0739852353

Customer Reviews:

"Beyond The Magic Bullet" -- The Closest We're Likely To Ever Get To A Perfect Duplication Of The "Single-Bullet Theory".......2006-10-02

Regarding the "Single-Bullet Theory"........

The cable television network "The Discovery Channel" aired the documentary program "JFK: Beyond The Magic Bullet" in November 2004, a very impressive John Kennedy assassination-related program which set out to attempt to duplicate (with all possible accuracy) the controversial "Single-Bullet Theory"; and it's a program which hammered one or two more nails into the "conspiracy" coffin.

The more and more time that passes, the firmer and more solidified the "Lone Assassin" position becomes with respect to JFK's murder in Dallas on November 22, 1963; while the "It Was A Conspiracy" side makes no headway whatsoever, with zero tests like that of The Discovery Channel's "SBT" test being performed to prove the conspiracy buffs are correct. Nor do we ever see any computer simulations for the "CT" side to "prove" their case for conspiracy (a la Dale Myers' exacting animation project, which, like the "Magic Bullet" program, goes a long way toward proving the SBT is a truism).

Several impressive things supporting the overall doability of the SBT scenario came out of the "Beyond The Magic Bullet" program.....such as the "log" test (with a bullet being fired into a solid block of wood). The test bullet looked absolutely perfect after being dug out of several feet of wood.

And, of course, the actual SBT re-creation itself....which proved beyond any doubt that a WCC, 6.5mm, FMJ, Mannlicher-Carcano bullet exactly like "CE399" (the actual bullet from the JFK case in 1963) could, indeed, take a very similar path through two "bodies", and then emerge in pretty decent shape....as we can see here:

216.122.129.112/dc/user_files/6735.jpg

The Discovery Channel test bullet was more damaged than CE399, but IMO the test proved a very important thing -- it proved that a bullet like Oswald's 399 could go through two bodies, do a lot of damage, and NOT BE BROKEN UP AT ALL.

The test bullet, just like 399, emerged PERFECTLY WHOLE (i.e., not fragmented at all). It's all in ONE PIECE. It's flattened more than 399, sure....but certainly not banged all to hell like Dr. Cyril Wecht seems to think a bullet like 399 would HAVE to have been if it went through the bodies of both Jack Kennedy and John Connally and caused seven wounds; and the "test" bullet caused an extra (2nd) rib fracture within the John Connally mock-up "body" during the re-creation as well.

The nose portion of the test bullet wasn't flattened at all either, which is an important factor, indicating almost certainly it took a similar path through John Connally's "mock" torso in the test, just as CE399 most-likely took through JBC's real torso in 1963 -- indicating a bullet that smashed into most of the hard objects that it hit in a BACKWARD, END-FIRST manner, thereby keeping the nose undamaged.

And another impressive part of the "Magic Bullet" broadcast was the ending sequence which had a doctor giving his erroneous opinion that the damage he had just seen in the X-rays from the re-creation almost certainly must have been caused "by more than just one bullet".

When proven wrong in this multi-bullet belief, the Los Angeles doctor was genuinely surprised. (Do CTers think that he's a "CT plant" too...only feigning "surprise" when confronted with the test results to further the notion of the SBT?)

All-in-all....that Discovery Channel broadcast did an amazing job at replicating the damage path and general characteristics of CE399. The test bullet exited the JFK mock body much lower than the real 399 did in '63, true. I certainly cannot deny this obvious difference. But we must keep in mind that a PERFECT re-creation can never be fully achieved, with every single "human" nuance accounted for (since only mock torsos were utilized in the re-creation).

With some unavoidable limitations in mind, the SBT re-creation done by the Australian team of JFK researchers in early October of 2004 is as close to the real event that I believe we're likely to ever see. And the results most certainly do not debunk the likelihood of the Single-Bullet Conclusion. To the contrary -- the results of that re-creation enhance the viability of the Warren Commission's one-bullet conclusion greatly.

Ten Days That Shook the World. Foreward By V. I. Lenin. Intro. By Granville Hicks [Modern Library 215]

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Ten Days That Shook the World. Foreward By V. I. Lenin. Intro. By Granville Hicks [Modern Library 215]
John Reed
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J0O6JM

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