I wonder if you realize how extreme and biased you make yourself look with this kind of polemic.
Pretty dadgum extreme and biased. YEE-HAA!
You couldn't even list six books, but only five.
That's because I was quoting a post from 2018. Here ya go:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Happy now?
Then, you just had to get on your soapbox and repeat your talking point that everyone who disagrees with you has a "conspiracy-prone mindset." In other replies, you've stated that those who disagree with you have warped minds, faulty neural pathways, and even a form of mental illness. In one reply, you said Greg Doudna was part of the "lunatic fringe." In another reply, you said that Dr. David Mantik sees things that no one else sees.
Not
everyone, sweetie, but indeed some we could name.
I'm sure Greg is an intelligent and hardworking guy who is kind to stray dogs, but in my opinion his ideas on virtually every issue are indeed lunatic fringe stuff. YMMV, and I'll bet it does.
The fact is, as I have pointed out repeatedly, there is now a VAST body of psychological and sociological literature concerning the conspiracy-prone mindset. Your continued umbrage might seem to many as though you were protesting just a wee bit too much.
Familiarity with this literature would be exceedingly helpful to a newbie in attempting to separate the wheat (e.g., Larry Hancock) from the chaff (i.e., you) in the CT literature.
And notice the difference between the balance in my list and the lop-sided nature of your list. You list a very old book (Epstein) that questions the Warren Commission but posits a conspiracy theory that virtually no one believes anymore, and you list a book on Oswald in Russia (Titovets) written in 2021 by a guy who knew Oswald during his few years in Russia from October 1959 to June 1962. I would have been hard pressed to think of two weaker pro-conspiracy books. Your three pro-LN books are not terrible--I can think of several that are worse--but two of the authors had rather weak credentials to be writing about the JFK case, and it shows in their books (McMillan and Davison).
In my list, I included a recent and robust scholarly defense of the Warren Report, an exposition on the mortal-error theory (which disagrees with both the lone-gunman view and the conspiracy view), a book that focuses on the nature of the shooting and goes no further than to argue for multiple shooters without speculating on suspects), a book on the historic ARRB disclosures written by a former senior ARRB analyst, a book on the forensic and ballistics evidence written by a radiation oncologist and physicist who's also licensed in radiology, and a book on the evidence of Mafia involvement written by an award-winning investigative journalist.
I will concede: you are as fair and balanced as FOX News.
What you fail to grasp is that I am talking about
methodology for a newbie. My suggestion would be for a newbie, BEFORE he (or she) dives into substantive JFKA materials, to (1) familiarize himself with the literature concerning the conspiracy-prone mindset, and (2) thoroughly acquaint himself with Oswald the actual man, not the fictional Most Interesting Man Who Ever Lived of much CT literature or the cardboard cutout who is plugged into many conspiracy theories only because "we gotta do
something with him."
