by Garry Wills
First published 1994
Jack Ruby stands in the basement of Dallas police headquarters on November 24, 1963. Around him, reporters and officers crowd the narrow corridor. Lee Harvey Oswald emerges, flanked by detectives. Ruby steps forward and fires a single shot. The man who killed President Kennedy falls to the concrete floor. Ruby later tells anyone who will listen that he acted as a patriotic American doing his duty. Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills teams with crime writer Ovid Demaris to examine Ruby's life before this moment and reconstruct the shooting that shocked a nation already reeling from assassination. They trace Ruby's path from nightclub owner to the most famous gunman in America, revealing the man behind the claim of patriotic duty.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, crime, american-history
Vibes: suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-event, true-story
Setting: Dallas, Texas
Period: 1963
276 pages · Paperback · Da Capo Press