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Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film
The moving, untold family story behind Abraham Zapruder's film footage of the Kennedy assassination and its lasting impact on our world.
Abraham Zapruder didn't know when he ran home to grab his 8mm camera on November 22, 1963 that this single spontaneous decision would change his family's life for generations to come. Originally intended as a home movie of President Kennedy's motorcade, Zapruder's film of the JFK assassination is now shown in every American history class, included in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit questions, and referenced in novels and films. It is the most famous example of citizen journalism, a precursor to the iconic images of our time, such as the Challenger explosion, the Rodney King beating, and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. But few know the complicated legacy of the film itself.
Now Abraham's granddaughter, Alexandra Zapruder, is ready to tell the complete story for the first time. With the help of the Zapruder family's exclusive records, memories, and documents, Zapruder tracks the film's torturous journey through history, all while American society undergoes its own transformation, and a new media-driven consumer culture challenges traditional ideas of privacy, ownership, journalism, and knowledge.
Part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder demonstrates how one man's unwitting moment in the spotlight shifted the way politics, culture, and media intersect, bringing about the larger social questions that define our age.
Abraham Zapruder didn't know when he ran home to grab his 8mm camera on November 22, 1963 that this single spontaneous decision would change his family's life for generations to come. Originally intended as a home movie of President Kennedy's motorcade, Zapruder's film of the JFK assassination is now shown in every American history class, included in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit questions, and referenced in novels and films. It is the most famous example of citizen journalism, a precursor to the iconic images of our time, such as the Challenger explosion, the Rodney King beating, and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. But few know the complicated legacy of the film itself.
Now Abraham's granddaughter, Alexandra Zapruder, is ready to tell the complete story for the first time. With the help of the Zapruder family's exclusive records, memories, and documents, Zapruder tracks the film's torturous journey through history, all while American society undergoes its own transformation, and a new media-driven consumer culture challenges traditional ideas of privacy, ownership, journalism, and knowledge.
Part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder demonstrates how one man's unwitting moment in the spotlight shifted the way politics, culture, and media intersect, bringing about the larger social questions that define our age.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2016
About the author
Alexandra Zapruder
5 books29 followersAlexandra Zapruder was on the founding staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and was writer and co-producer of I'm Still Here, an award-winning documentary for young people based on Salvaged Pages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
June 7, 2017
I was lucky to see Alexandra Zapruder, Abraham Zapruder's granddaughter, talk about her book a couple months ago at the San Antonio Public Library Festival. See video here:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?425730-...
This peaked my interest so I checked it out. As the book title indicates, it's a history of the 26 second home movie of the Kennedy assassination and its complicated issues of ownership, evidence, copyright, royalties, and more. It also addresses a bit of the family history and the impact the film had on the family. If you're looking for a book about the Kennedy family, you wIll need to look elsewhere but this is definitely a well researched and fascinating book about a piece of history. Highly recommend it if this your type of genre.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?425730-...
This peaked my interest so I checked it out. As the book title indicates, it's a history of the 26 second home movie of the Kennedy assassination and its complicated issues of ownership, evidence, copyright, royalties, and more. It also addresses a bit of the family history and the impact the film had on the family. If you're looking for a book about the Kennedy family, you wIll need to look elsewhere but this is definitely a well researched and fascinating book about a piece of history. Highly recommend it if this your type of genre.
August 15, 2017
About twice as long as needed, this book digs deep into the family experience of the Zapruder film. By far the best part is the description of Abraham Zapruder and his fateful link to the Kennedy assassination. As the book wore on, it became apparent that Alexandra was defending her family's role as caretaker of the film. However, as much as she attempts to deflect criticism over their profit from the film and its copyright, the elephant is still in the room. After stating as "preposterous" that rumors of their coypright profit being $3 to 5 million, she never does say what their profit was; and she is a direct descendant who has access to this information. They were pulling in $30k-$50k per commercial request back in the early 1990's, a good annual salary back then for middle class Americans. They originally sold the film for almost $500,000 in today's dollars to Life Magazine, who then gave it back to them for $1, then when the U.S. passed a law to acquire JFK assassination materials, they milked the government for $16 million by hiring the best attorneys in the U.S. to go up against mid-level government attorneys in the arbritration hearing determining the film value. So sorry Ms. Zapruder, it was about the $$. I appreciate that she represents her family as upstanding and honorable, but the fact is, they did all they could to maximize profit from the film. But lets not lose sight of good old Abe, who as an amateur made perhaps the most important film in history, and he kept filming while everyone else was screaming and running.
April 18, 2017
SUMMARY
"They killed him. They killed him." Abraham Zapruder, cried. He was the first to know of John F. Kennedy's death. He saw it through the zoom lens of his double 8mm video camera on that bright, sunny day at Dealey Plaza. The motorcade passed right in front of him, then he heard the gunfire. It was the most horrific thing he had ever seen. Everyone around him was stunned. The news reports said that Kennedy was taken to Parkland Hospital. But Abe knew he was already dead.
Abe immediately determined that he had to get a copy of his film to the Secret Service. News reporters were hounding him for a copy. The afternoon of the assassination, Zapruder along with the Secret Service went to the Eastman Kodak processing facility near Love Field to develop the double 8mm color film. Later that day he and others took the developed film and had three copies made at the Jamieson Film Company. He delivered two of the three duplicate copies to the Secret Service that night. Abe kept the original film and the third copy of the duplicate. And the long story of the film begins.
Alexandra Zapruder, Abe's grandaughter, tells us her grandfather's story of that horrendous day that he filmed President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. This book is the untold family story behind what happened to the twenty-six seconds of original film footage of Kennedy's assassination. Alexandra uses personal family records, records from Life magazine who possessed the film for twelve years, other previously sealed archival sources, and interviews with family members and others who had contact with the film. She traces the films complex journey through history and most importantly, details the many controversies the family had to endure, with the media, the Federal government and the arts community.
This book is part biography, part family history, and part historical record. It shows how this historic film changed a family and raised some of the most important social, cultural, and moral questions of our time. The film was notably the most graphically violent of it's time. Add to that, it was the death of a beloved president. It fueled debates about privacy, copyrights, access, and ownership.
REVIEW
Sometimes you read a book that makes your heart pound in your chest. A book that you can't stop thinking about or talking about. This is one of those books. Of course it's encompasses an monumental event in US history. But the book is not about the assassination. It's only about the twenty-six second film of the assassination. The book was very educational, enlightening, and informative. I thought I knew all I needed to know about the Kennedy assassination. But I didn't know this story.
I am ever so thankful to Alexandra Zapruder for meticulously pouring over pages and pages of documentation, conducting interviews and bringing the history of the film to light. The result is a comprehensive narrative that has shaped much of today's thinking about access to such things in the future. The family faced a tremendous amount of controversy over the film. Owning such a thing, as shown in this book carries a tremendous amount of responsibility. Alexandra Zupruder clearly testifies to how her grandfather and her father carried out this responsibility.
Alexandra portrays her grandfather as an honorable man, whose only hope, in this horrific situation was to not cause any additional emotional harm to the Kennedy family by the exploitation of this film.
It is a well-written and thought-provoking book. But the book is long. Twenty-six Seconds is 480 pages and the audio is over 14 hours. So it's quite a commitment. I would have enjoyed it more had it been somewhat more concise, but cannot imagine what she could have possibly cut.
"They killed him. They killed him." Abraham Zapruder, cried. He was the first to know of John F. Kennedy's death. He saw it through the zoom lens of his double 8mm video camera on that bright, sunny day at Dealey Plaza. The motorcade passed right in front of him, then he heard the gunfire. It was the most horrific thing he had ever seen. Everyone around him was stunned. The news reports said that Kennedy was taken to Parkland Hospital. But Abe knew he was already dead.
Abe immediately determined that he had to get a copy of his film to the Secret Service. News reporters were hounding him for a copy. The afternoon of the assassination, Zapruder along with the Secret Service went to the Eastman Kodak processing facility near Love Field to develop the double 8mm color film. Later that day he and others took the developed film and had three copies made at the Jamieson Film Company. He delivered two of the three duplicate copies to the Secret Service that night. Abe kept the original film and the third copy of the duplicate. And the long story of the film begins.
Alexandra Zapruder, Abe's grandaughter, tells us her grandfather's story of that horrendous day that he filmed President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. This book is the untold family story behind what happened to the twenty-six seconds of original film footage of Kennedy's assassination. Alexandra uses personal family records, records from Life magazine who possessed the film for twelve years, other previously sealed archival sources, and interviews with family members and others who had contact with the film. She traces the films complex journey through history and most importantly, details the many controversies the family had to endure, with the media, the Federal government and the arts community.
This book is part biography, part family history, and part historical record. It shows how this historic film changed a family and raised some of the most important social, cultural, and moral questions of our time. The film was notably the most graphically violent of it's time. Add to that, it was the death of a beloved president. It fueled debates about privacy, copyrights, access, and ownership.
REVIEW
Sometimes you read a book that makes your heart pound in your chest. A book that you can't stop thinking about or talking about. This is one of those books. Of course it's encompasses an monumental event in US history. But the book is not about the assassination. It's only about the twenty-six second film of the assassination. The book was very educational, enlightening, and informative. I thought I knew all I needed to know about the Kennedy assassination. But I didn't know this story.
I am ever so thankful to Alexandra Zapruder for meticulously pouring over pages and pages of documentation, conducting interviews and bringing the history of the film to light. The result is a comprehensive narrative that has shaped much of today's thinking about access to such things in the future. The family faced a tremendous amount of controversy over the film. Owning such a thing, as shown in this book carries a tremendous amount of responsibility. Alexandra Zupruder clearly testifies to how her grandfather and her father carried out this responsibility.
Alexandra portrays her grandfather as an honorable man, whose only hope, in this horrific situation was to not cause any additional emotional harm to the Kennedy family by the exploitation of this film.
It is a well-written and thought-provoking book. But the book is long. Twenty-six Seconds is 480 pages and the audio is over 14 hours. So it's quite a commitment. I would have enjoyed it more had it been somewhat more concise, but cannot imagine what she could have possibly cut.
November 16, 2016
The longer I read the introduction chapter of this book, the more I feared being put to sleep by all the over-thinking and over-analysis. I eventually just stopped reading that chapter and went on to the next. While the rest of the book was not as mind-numbing as its introduction, I still would only recommend it to those readers who are enormously interested in the Zapruder film and all aspects of it; including the use of the film by both those who were for and against Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. I apparently wasn't that interested, even though I thought I would be; because the only thing I found truly captivating in the book was the story of Abe Zapruder's life, before and after he filmed the shooting of John F. Kennedy. Mr. Zapruder, a Russian Jewish immigrant who felt so safe in the United States, reacted in a heartrending way after seeing the most horrifying thing he had ever seen in his life, on a sunny day in Dallas, Texas, no less.
(Note: I received a free e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher or author.)
(Note: I received a free e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher or author.)
February 5, 2017
I didn't have strong opinions about the Zapruder film or the Kennedy assassination before reading this book. and really, I still don't, although obviously that was a super-important event in American history and the film was an amazing capture of the moment before everyone had a camera all the time, and it's an impressive piece of history itself.
If you don't know, Abraham Zapruder is the man who caught on his home movie camera, the entire Kennedy assassination, in the version you've definitely seen. Yes, other people also were there with cameras that day, but his is the definitive one. He immediately went to the police and FBI and they worked with him and Kodak to get it developed and copied right away (both of which were quite hard to do with 8 mm film) and before the end of the weekend, he'd sold the print rights to Time-Life, and soon thereafter also sold them the motion picture rights. Twelve years later, the Zapruder family got the rights back and kept them, dealing with hundreds if not thousands of requests from researchers, students, amateur sleuths, and the mere curious, until 1998 when the movie was finally released on VHS and the government took possession of the original copy of the film.
Alexandra is Abraham's granddaughter. Like me, she wasn't born yet when Kennedy was killed, so her understanding of and experience with the assassination was very different than that of her grandparents and parents. Her grandfather died when she was an infant, and her father also died fairly young, so she started to do interviews and research to piece together, not only the history of this artifact and film, but also of her family and their relationship to this accidental defining moment in their lives, that continues to impact them to this day (after all, they don't exactly have a common name, so they can't escape perpetual questions.)
Ms. Zapruder tried very hard to be objective. I'd say she succeed about 80% of the time. Her family has gotten a lot of criticism over the years, the vast majority of it completely unfounded, so she's a little defensive, if understandably so.
I was curious if a book about an object would be able to hold up over this length (it's over 400 pages) and it totally does. She doesn't get much into the conspiracy theories, aside from people who wrote books about those and tried to use the Zapruder film as proof. And it was shady the way that Oliver Stone got permission to use the film in JFK. (Basically, he set up a separate company and the woman from that company who approached the Zapruders claimed to be a researcher.) It really is a unique piece of history and it's great to have all this context for it.
And a piece of trivia—while I was reading it, a woman who wrote an editorial about the release of the VHS in her local paper was mentioned, and it was my hometown paper, The Tennessean, and I recognized the name which has a slightly unique spelling. I messaged my elementary school friend with the same name and she confirmed that is her! She had no idea that 20 years later, her editorial was excerpted here. Small world.
If you don't know, Abraham Zapruder is the man who caught on his home movie camera, the entire Kennedy assassination, in the version you've definitely seen. Yes, other people also were there with cameras that day, but his is the definitive one. He immediately went to the police and FBI and they worked with him and Kodak to get it developed and copied right away (both of which were quite hard to do with 8 mm film) and before the end of the weekend, he'd sold the print rights to Time-Life, and soon thereafter also sold them the motion picture rights. Twelve years later, the Zapruder family got the rights back and kept them, dealing with hundreds if not thousands of requests from researchers, students, amateur sleuths, and the mere curious, until 1998 when the movie was finally released on VHS and the government took possession of the original copy of the film.
Alexandra is Abraham's granddaughter. Like me, she wasn't born yet when Kennedy was killed, so her understanding of and experience with the assassination was very different than that of her grandparents and parents. Her grandfather died when she was an infant, and her father also died fairly young, so she started to do interviews and research to piece together, not only the history of this artifact and film, but also of her family and their relationship to this accidental defining moment in their lives, that continues to impact them to this day (after all, they don't exactly have a common name, so they can't escape perpetual questions.)
Ms. Zapruder tried very hard to be objective. I'd say she succeed about 80% of the time. Her family has gotten a lot of criticism over the years, the vast majority of it completely unfounded, so she's a little defensive, if understandably so.
I was curious if a book about an object would be able to hold up over this length (it's over 400 pages) and it totally does. She doesn't get much into the conspiracy theories, aside from people who wrote books about those and tried to use the Zapruder film as proof. And it was shady the way that Oliver Stone got permission to use the film in JFK. (Basically, he set up a separate company and the woman from that company who approached the Zapruders claimed to be a researcher.) It really is a unique piece of history and it's great to have all this context for it.
And a piece of trivia—while I was reading it, a woman who wrote an editorial about the release of the VHS in her local paper was mentioned, and it was my hometown paper, The Tennessean, and I recognized the name which has a slightly unique spelling. I messaged my elementary school friend with the same name and she confirmed that is her! She had no idea that 20 years later, her editorial was excerpted here. Small world.
December 17, 2016
A very fascinating study of the Zapruder film. The famous 8mm home movie that thrust Abraham Zapruder in the spotlight for recording the murder of John F. Kennedy.
In the late 2000's the Zapruder family heirs took the U.S. Government to arbitration after the gov't seized ownership of the film. The last chapter is a technical study of the recorded testimony of the proceedings, but the most interesting chapters are at the beginning of the book, when Abraham Zapruder leaves his office and stands with his office workers to film, what he thinks is a presidential motorcade for his family to watch.
In the aftermath of this event, Zapruder tries to do the right thing. He contacts the FBI and they aren't interested at first. Eventually it becomes the property of Life Magazine. For the next decades, the film is discussed, but rarely seen (except for bootleg copies.)
Alexandra Zapruder does tireless research, getting access to files and memos at Life Magazine, the government released files following the JFK act, family interviews and correspondence. Her most fascinating conclusion is the idea that the suppression of the film from public viewing ( reasons I will not go into here) led to the rise in conspiracy theories. When you read the timeline and what happened to the film in the early days right after the assassination, it does seem to fuel those theories.
If you are interested in history and the many ways this film shaped our world from 1963 on, this is a must read.
In the late 2000's the Zapruder family heirs took the U.S. Government to arbitration after the gov't seized ownership of the film. The last chapter is a technical study of the recorded testimony of the proceedings, but the most interesting chapters are at the beginning of the book, when Abraham Zapruder leaves his office and stands with his office workers to film, what he thinks is a presidential motorcade for his family to watch.
In the aftermath of this event, Zapruder tries to do the right thing. He contacts the FBI and they aren't interested at first. Eventually it becomes the property of Life Magazine. For the next decades, the film is discussed, but rarely seen (except for bootleg copies.)
Alexandra Zapruder does tireless research, getting access to files and memos at Life Magazine, the government released files following the JFK act, family interviews and correspondence. Her most fascinating conclusion is the idea that the suppression of the film from public viewing ( reasons I will not go into here) led to the rise in conspiracy theories. When you read the timeline and what happened to the film in the early days right after the assassination, it does seem to fuel those theories.
If you are interested in history and the many ways this film shaped our world from 1963 on, this is a must read.
November 7, 2023
4.5 stars rounded up.
A fascinating account of the history of the Zapruder film, as told by a family member. This sadly iconic film cast an inexorable pall over the entire Zapruder family from Abe, who was devastated by what he caught on film to Harry, his son, who was responsible for the film after Abe died, and the extended family, including Abe‘s granddaughter, Alexandra, the author of this book.
The Zapruder family loved JFK and had difficulty dealing with the fact that they became a part of the assassination narrative. From 1963-1999, the Zapruder family safeguarded the film, authorizing its use for research and defended its copyright, all of which was often a time consuming labor of love. They were pilloried by the press and conspiracy theorist for this. Despite their vigilance bootleg copies could be found and purchased worldwide. In 1999 the US government bought the camera-original film for $16 million but not the copyright, which the Zapruder family donated to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, thus marking “the end of our family’s long guardianship over one of the most controversial and contested objects of the 20th century.“
The book is very well written, and except for one chapter in which the author recounts the legal minutia of the family’s dealing with LIFE magazine, and their defense of their copyright in dealing with bootleg copies, the writing is very compelling and at times beautiful.
Particularly interesting is Chapter 9: The Eternal Frame and the Endless Debates, which is all about all the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination, and how this film either fit into those theories or didn’t fit into those theories. It’s also about the exploitation of the film by some “artists“.
On a personal note, I still have some of the original LIFE magazines, and LOOK magazines, documenting the assassination and its aftermath, which I dug out to look at while I was reading this book. I also found it interesting that some of my friends had no idea what “the Zapruder film” was, even though they lived through the 60s. Now, despite all the family’s work to protect the film from exploitation, you can now google “Zapruder film” and find it all over the Internet.
Good quotes:
“In many ways, it’s impossible to understand the history of the Zapruder film, without traveling back in time to see it through the eyes of those who sought when they had never been anything like it before.”
“If this divide was extreme in 1975, it grew to rather outlandish proportions by the 1990s, when extreme conspiracy theorists contended that the Zapruder film itself was either altered or, inevitably, a hoax.”
“Through the entire hearing, when the experts or members of the board, imagine the film from our point of view, they could see it only as a financial asset. But this is not what the Zapruder film was to the Zapruder family. From our point of view, the film represented the trauma for our grandfather. It was a source of pain for the Kennedys. It was a reminder of crushing disappointment and abandoned plans for my parent’s generation. It was a burden. It was an intrusion. It was a serious and complicated responsibility. It was a moral dilemma. It brought public censure and personal attacks on our family. It appropriated our name and change the course of our lives. In the end, it was a legacy we never asked for.”
“It is a keeper of memory-the film, that caught a moment in time of profound loss, a national disgrace, a dream destroyed from which America would never fully recover. It is a maddening puzzle-we see what happened, but we don’t know what happened-that raised new questions about our faith in visual representation itself. And it is contested evidence-the object around which there developed such deep mistrust towards government.”
A must read for anyone who has an interest in this unique piece of history, and this heartbreaking time in history.
FYI: although I welcome comments, I will not get into a discussion about any conspiracy theories. Take your theories somewhere else, or prepare to be blocked.
A fascinating account of the history of the Zapruder film, as told by a family member. This sadly iconic film cast an inexorable pall over the entire Zapruder family from Abe, who was devastated by what he caught on film to Harry, his son, who was responsible for the film after Abe died, and the extended family, including Abe‘s granddaughter, Alexandra, the author of this book.
The Zapruder family loved JFK and had difficulty dealing with the fact that they became a part of the assassination narrative. From 1963-1999, the Zapruder family safeguarded the film, authorizing its use for research and defended its copyright, all of which was often a time consuming labor of love. They were pilloried by the press and conspiracy theorist for this. Despite their vigilance bootleg copies could be found and purchased worldwide. In 1999 the US government bought the camera-original film for $16 million but not the copyright, which the Zapruder family donated to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, thus marking “the end of our family’s long guardianship over one of the most controversial and contested objects of the 20th century.“
The book is very well written, and except for one chapter in which the author recounts the legal minutia of the family’s dealing with LIFE magazine, and their defense of their copyright in dealing with bootleg copies, the writing is very compelling and at times beautiful.
Particularly interesting is Chapter 9: The Eternal Frame and the Endless Debates, which is all about all the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination, and how this film either fit into those theories or didn’t fit into those theories. It’s also about the exploitation of the film by some “artists“.
On a personal note, I still have some of the original LIFE magazines, and LOOK magazines, documenting the assassination and its aftermath, which I dug out to look at while I was reading this book. I also found it interesting that some of my friends had no idea what “the Zapruder film” was, even though they lived through the 60s. Now, despite all the family’s work to protect the film from exploitation, you can now google “Zapruder film” and find it all over the Internet.
Good quotes:
“In many ways, it’s impossible to understand the history of the Zapruder film, without traveling back in time to see it through the eyes of those who sought when they had never been anything like it before.”
“If this divide was extreme in 1975, it grew to rather outlandish proportions by the 1990s, when extreme conspiracy theorists contended that the Zapruder film itself was either altered or, inevitably, a hoax.”
“Through the entire hearing, when the experts or members of the board, imagine the film from our point of view, they could see it only as a financial asset. But this is not what the Zapruder film was to the Zapruder family. From our point of view, the film represented the trauma for our grandfather. It was a source of pain for the Kennedys. It was a reminder of crushing disappointment and abandoned plans for my parent’s generation. It was a burden. It was an intrusion. It was a serious and complicated responsibility. It was a moral dilemma. It brought public censure and personal attacks on our family. It appropriated our name and change the course of our lives. In the end, it was a legacy we never asked for.”
“It is a keeper of memory-the film, that caught a moment in time of profound loss, a national disgrace, a dream destroyed from which America would never fully recover. It is a maddening puzzle-we see what happened, but we don’t know what happened-that raised new questions about our faith in visual representation itself. And it is contested evidence-the object around which there developed such deep mistrust towards government.”
A must read for anyone who has an interest in this unique piece of history, and this heartbreaking time in history.
FYI: although I welcome comments, I will not get into a discussion about any conspiracy theories. Take your theories somewhere else, or prepare to be blocked.
December 24, 2016
How do you live through a national tragedy, when it happens just a few feet from you?
How do you live through it, when you just filmed it at the best vantage point?
How do you live through it, when you want to to do the right thing, and get a copy to the Secret Service, yet the press hounds you to buy it from you, or worse?
How do you live through it, when it's something that is never brought up within the family?
How do you live through it, when you don't want to profit from irreverent public showings, but want to be respectful to researchers requesting copies?
How do you live with being used as a pawn in a New Orleans Kangaroo court?
How do you live through it, when others pirate it, and even play it on television?
How do you live through it, when others accuse you of being a part of the cover up?
How does the next generation live through it, when they need to pick up the mantle?
How do you live through your own government attempting to steal your private property, and then not wanting to pay you anything?
How do you live through personal attacks from the press, who's repeatedly making you out to be like you're a major profiteer?
Can you imagine being a part of a younger generation of the Zapruder family, and wanting to search the internet for info on family history?
A fascinating history about the man behind the camera, and the following generations who guarded the film..
How do you live through it, when you just filmed it at the best vantage point?
How do you live through it, when you want to to do the right thing, and get a copy to the Secret Service, yet the press hounds you to buy it from you, or worse?
How do you live through it, when it's something that is never brought up within the family?
How do you live through it, when you don't want to profit from irreverent public showings, but want to be respectful to researchers requesting copies?
How do you live with being used as a pawn in a New Orleans Kangaroo court?
How do you live through it, when others pirate it, and even play it on television?
How do you live through it, when others accuse you of being a part of the cover up?
How does the next generation live through it, when they need to pick up the mantle?
How do you live through your own government attempting to steal your private property, and then not wanting to pay you anything?
How do you live through personal attacks from the press, who's repeatedly making you out to be like you're a major profiteer?
Can you imagine being a part of a younger generation of the Zapruder family, and wanting to search the internet for info on family history?
A fascinating history about the man behind the camera, and the following generations who guarded the film..
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 15, 2017
I thought the history of the Zapruder Film would make for a fascinating read and it does...in parts. Getting past all the legal jargon was a bit more tedious.
December 16, 2016
Abraham Zapruder never expected to film the most shocking twenty six seconds of modern presidential history: the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Now, his granddaughter traces what happened to that simple home movie in this fascinating account of overzealous journalists, unprepared government agencies, and a humble family trying to maintain a delicate balance between ethical action and ownership of an item that seemed to belong to the entire country. With access to previously unseen family documents and government files, Zapruder doggedly follows the provenance of the film while honestly examining her family's emotional, logistical and financial decisions. This book is an excellent companion to accounts of the assassination and its aftermath.
October 24, 2017
I feared this book would be boring. After all, it is the biography of a home video. It was anything but!
Written by the granddaughter of Abe Zapruder, who captured the Kennedy assassination on video, this is a powerful story of how the film changed the Zapruder family and, decades later, American jurisprudence. As I followed the film on its journey from Zapruder to LIFE magazine, back to the family, and eventually to the US government via a controversial eminent domain taking, I found myself unable to put the book down. It's an administrative thriller, if there is such a thing!
Written by the granddaughter of Abe Zapruder, who captured the Kennedy assassination on video, this is a powerful story of how the film changed the Zapruder family and, decades later, American jurisprudence. As I followed the film on its journey from Zapruder to LIFE magazine, back to the family, and eventually to the US government via a controversial eminent domain taking, I found myself unable to put the book down. It's an administrative thriller, if there is such a thing!
January 4, 2017
I loved it. What a fascinating story, with all sorts of information I never knew before. It's like finding out lots of new information about an old friend (although I can't really say the Zapruder film is a old friend, but it's been a part of all of our lives for more than 50 years. But it never occurred to me what the film might mean to the family of the man who shot it). I highly recommend this book - the research itself is absolutely amazing.
June 11, 2024
Initially engaging about a dressmaker who takes his camera to see the President of the United States get 'shot down like a dog.' Eventually it devolves into legal battle about copyright and ownership. Some swearing, insightful.
November 10, 2016
Pleased to present this Q&A with author Alexandra Zapruder based on a complimentary advance copy of the book: http://wp.me/P4x0h8-bAr.
May 23, 2017
Review title: End of Camelot, beginning of a visual age
I have never been a conspiracy theorist or even particularly interested in John F. Kennedy's assassination, so when I spent a month working in Dallas recently, and then found a copy of The Day Kennedy was Shot, a 1968 history (in itself a historical document) at a library book sale, I was surprised at how powerfully the topic struck me. And when I found this book on the new nonfiction shelf at my local public library I knew I had to read it as a companion piece.
The Zapruder film is 26 seconds of home movie taken by a motorcade spectator in Dealey Plaza on November 22,1963 which captured the fatal shots and the immediate reaction of Jacqueline Kennedy as her husband died in her arms. The event defined a generation in its sudden impact and murder of a popular young President who was the now-tragic image of Camelot, and the film became the defining image of that horrible event. It was the first and the most famous amateur visual image of a public event, providing a visual record we now take for granted in the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter era. As I turned on my tablet to write this review, the CNN website popped up the headline of the sad and deadly explosion at a pop concert in Manchester, England; below the lead paragraph was a 12 second video from the arena captured by an audience member. CNN is obviously a huge mainstream news gathering organization, and symptomatic of the change in the 50-plus years since the Zapruder film, this amateur video and its presence in such a prominent position in this tragic news item is both unremarkable and unremarked.
The author is the granddaughter of the spectator Abraham Zapruder who captured the film and she wrote this book as both a family memoir and a well-researched history of the life of the film. Apart from the shocking images in the short video, how did it come to be, and why is it so intensely studied and sharply divisive?
Zapruder was born in Czarist Russia but came to the US as a young boy with his parents to escape the Jewish pogroms. He found work in the clothing industry in Brooklyn, moved to Dallas in 1940 to become the manager of a women's apparel company, and by 1963 he owned his own apparel company with offices and factory in a building across the street from the Texas School Book Repository building and a short walk to the motorcade route that November morning. He was an avid amateur movie maker, proud of his new Super 8 movie camera which he used to take home movies of his family. That day, he gave his employees permission to take a long lunch to walk down and observe the Kennedy motorcade (he and his wife were strong Kennedy supporters), and when prompted by his secretary, went home to get his camera and find his own spot on the grassy knoll at the side of Dealey Plaza. When working in Dallas recently, I visited the Plaza, and was amazed how small the area was and how close Zapruder was (his spot is now marked) to both the roadway and the Repository building.
Zapruder, horrified by what he had seen through the viewfinder, immediately recognized that he had captured the murder of the President on film, and found a Secret Service agent in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting. By that evening, he had gotten the film developed (not simple, his granddaughter writes, a fact that may surprise the younger generation familiar with instant digital imagery available from the phone in everyone's pocket) and shown it to the Secret Service and the FBI. And of course later that night the media had also gotten wind of the film and the Zapruder family struggle with this unsought legal, historical, and cultural landmark had begun.
By the next day, Zapruder had sold the right to still images from the film to Life magazine, then the most recognized journalistic outlet for news and pop culture photography. Life stopped its presses and within days of the shooting had put still images of the Zapruder film in print. A few days later they also bought rights to the original film. But there were a couple of problems: the FBI and Secret Service already had copies that were made that first night for investigative purposes, and Life was a magazine, which in those days before media consolidation had no video outlet to show the film! The combination of obsolete technologies and media organizations are a measure of how much and how quickly the world has changed.
And so the history of the film began its torturous route. It became the target of intense study by law enforcement agencies trying to decipher what had happened in those few seconds. It became the target of intense speculation by conspiracy theorists who obsessed about what the film showed or what they projected into the film to try to prove a second or third shooter and other bizarre alternative histories. Abraham Zapruder, still a supporter of the Kennedys, tried to control access to the film to ensure it was used respectfully. Along the way it acquired cultural significance beyond the value of the images it showed, and became the subject of ownership battles, bootlegs, modification, and legal challenges to show it or suppress it.
Alexandra Zapruder documents all this history by going back to the primary sources and interviewing surviving first-hand participants in its history--which sadly do not include her grandfather, who died when she was very young, and her father who became the next custodian of the film but never talked about it with his children and also died before Alexandra became a historian, educator, and writer with the idea to document her family's relationship with the film. The family tried to respect the patriarchal wishes for the film, but it cost them in ways the author only learned when she started researching the book, an activity that was not uniformly approved by all members of the extended family. The family handling of the film was criticized and legally challenged by the public, researchers, and the media. Even when they tried to get rid of the film, trying to do the right things for the right reasons, they seemed to always happen at the wrong times or be seen in the wrong light.
As a cultural, legal, and media trailblazer, the film raised thorny issues of copyright ownership, public right to know, the scientific and legal use of visual evidence, the moral right to profit from privately owned images of public events, and the government right to use eminent domain to claim ownership of the images. Alexandra Zapruder pulls no punches in documenting these and other philosophical and legal issues, even when they shine a negative light on family decisions on how to handle the film. The film established precedents that have had far-reaching impacts in the era of the Internet, Facebook, and YouTube--where, concludes Zapruder, anyone can now view the original film and dozens of variants with enhancements and commentary. Even though the Zapruder film is so prevalent in the cultural background of the 21st century that I know what it contains, I did not look for and view a copy before I read the book or wrote this review. The lesson of Zapruder's book is that what we see when we watch the film is not as important as what we expect the film to show us.
I will now go watch the Zapruder film, and I encourage other readers to read this book first before watching the film, and think seriously about what you expect to see.
I have never been a conspiracy theorist or even particularly interested in John F. Kennedy's assassination, so when I spent a month working in Dallas recently, and then found a copy of The Day Kennedy was Shot, a 1968 history (in itself a historical document) at a library book sale, I was surprised at how powerfully the topic struck me. And when I found this book on the new nonfiction shelf at my local public library I knew I had to read it as a companion piece.
The Zapruder film is 26 seconds of home movie taken by a motorcade spectator in Dealey Plaza on November 22,1963 which captured the fatal shots and the immediate reaction of Jacqueline Kennedy as her husband died in her arms. The event defined a generation in its sudden impact and murder of a popular young President who was the now-tragic image of Camelot, and the film became the defining image of that horrible event. It was the first and the most famous amateur visual image of a public event, providing a visual record we now take for granted in the YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter era. As I turned on my tablet to write this review, the CNN website popped up the headline of the sad and deadly explosion at a pop concert in Manchester, England; below the lead paragraph was a 12 second video from the arena captured by an audience member. CNN is obviously a huge mainstream news gathering organization, and symptomatic of the change in the 50-plus years since the Zapruder film, this amateur video and its presence in such a prominent position in this tragic news item is both unremarkable and unremarked.
The author is the granddaughter of the spectator Abraham Zapruder who captured the film and she wrote this book as both a family memoir and a well-researched history of the life of the film. Apart from the shocking images in the short video, how did it come to be, and why is it so intensely studied and sharply divisive?
Zapruder was born in Czarist Russia but came to the US as a young boy with his parents to escape the Jewish pogroms. He found work in the clothing industry in Brooklyn, moved to Dallas in 1940 to become the manager of a women's apparel company, and by 1963 he owned his own apparel company with offices and factory in a building across the street from the Texas School Book Repository building and a short walk to the motorcade route that November morning. He was an avid amateur movie maker, proud of his new Super 8 movie camera which he used to take home movies of his family. That day, he gave his employees permission to take a long lunch to walk down and observe the Kennedy motorcade (he and his wife were strong Kennedy supporters), and when prompted by his secretary, went home to get his camera and find his own spot on the grassy knoll at the side of Dealey Plaza. When working in Dallas recently, I visited the Plaza, and was amazed how small the area was and how close Zapruder was (his spot is now marked) to both the roadway and the Repository building.
Zapruder, horrified by what he had seen through the viewfinder, immediately recognized that he had captured the murder of the President on film, and found a Secret Service agent in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting. By that evening, he had gotten the film developed (not simple, his granddaughter writes, a fact that may surprise the younger generation familiar with instant digital imagery available from the phone in everyone's pocket) and shown it to the Secret Service and the FBI. And of course later that night the media had also gotten wind of the film and the Zapruder family struggle with this unsought legal, historical, and cultural landmark had begun.
By the next day, Zapruder had sold the right to still images from the film to Life magazine, then the most recognized journalistic outlet for news and pop culture photography. Life stopped its presses and within days of the shooting had put still images of the Zapruder film in print. A few days later they also bought rights to the original film. But there were a couple of problems: the FBI and Secret Service already had copies that were made that first night for investigative purposes, and Life was a magazine, which in those days before media consolidation had no video outlet to show the film! The combination of obsolete technologies and media organizations are a measure of how much and how quickly the world has changed.
And so the history of the film began its torturous route. It became the target of intense study by law enforcement agencies trying to decipher what had happened in those few seconds. It became the target of intense speculation by conspiracy theorists who obsessed about what the film showed or what they projected into the film to try to prove a second or third shooter and other bizarre alternative histories. Abraham Zapruder, still a supporter of the Kennedys, tried to control access to the film to ensure it was used respectfully. Along the way it acquired cultural significance beyond the value of the images it showed, and became the subject of ownership battles, bootlegs, modification, and legal challenges to show it or suppress it.
Alexandra Zapruder documents all this history by going back to the primary sources and interviewing surviving first-hand participants in its history--which sadly do not include her grandfather, who died when she was very young, and her father who became the next custodian of the film but never talked about it with his children and also died before Alexandra became a historian, educator, and writer with the idea to document her family's relationship with the film. The family tried to respect the patriarchal wishes for the film, but it cost them in ways the author only learned when she started researching the book, an activity that was not uniformly approved by all members of the extended family. The family handling of the film was criticized and legally challenged by the public, researchers, and the media. Even when they tried to get rid of the film, trying to do the right things for the right reasons, they seemed to always happen at the wrong times or be seen in the wrong light.
As a cultural, legal, and media trailblazer, the film raised thorny issues of copyright ownership, public right to know, the scientific and legal use of visual evidence, the moral right to profit from privately owned images of public events, and the government right to use eminent domain to claim ownership of the images. Alexandra Zapruder pulls no punches in documenting these and other philosophical and legal issues, even when they shine a negative light on family decisions on how to handle the film. The film established precedents that have had far-reaching impacts in the era of the Internet, Facebook, and YouTube--where, concludes Zapruder, anyone can now view the original film and dozens of variants with enhancements and commentary. Even though the Zapruder film is so prevalent in the cultural background of the 21st century that I know what it contains, I did not look for and view a copy before I read the book or wrote this review. The lesson of Zapruder's book is that what we see when we watch the film is not as important as what we expect the film to show us.
I will now go watch the Zapruder film, and I encourage other readers to read this book first before watching the film, and think seriously about what you expect to see.
October 11, 2023
In this comprehensive cultural history of the Zapruder film, Abe Zapruder’s granddaughter traces the effects of documenting the Kennedy assassination on her family and American society. Zapruder, a Dallas clothing manufacturer and photography enthusiast, planned the perfect vantage point for President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, little suspecting that he would be a witness to history. Nevertheless, Zapruder’s camera hand remained steady after shots rang out and others began to run. His 26-second 8mm film became the unprecedented evidence in the murder investigation, as well as the subject of conspiracy theories, but as Alexandra Zapruder point out, it could never solve the assassination. The author explores Zapruder’s remarkable foresight in protecting the film and trying to shield his family and the public from its worst effects; in a time when we regularly see the worst of human violence on the internet, it is difficult to recapture the shock of the event, but she does a nuanced job of helping the reader understand the delicacy required to stop the film from exacerbating the pain of losing a President in whom so many had invested high expectations. There is so much to this book—about changing technology, film as a material object, political violence, the legal implications of ownership of history—that I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.
November 28, 2022
This book—despite being dry at times—is a fantastic, detailed portrait of a family who accidentally found themselves creating and managing one of the most profound relics of American history.
In the text, Alexandra Zapruder constantly wrestles with key questions: How private/public should the film and its handling be? At what point does a family’s property become national property? Is a home movie that turns out to be tragic and historic so much more than any other home movie? What ethical issues arise around selling the film? Zapruder lays out so many issues with a clear respect for her grandfather and father (while also defending them against some of the worse accusations brought against them).
This source is not unbiased, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be. This is the work of a woman coming to terms with a very complex part of her family’s history, as well as how it became part of our collective history in the United States and around the whole world.
I recommend this book.
In the text, Alexandra Zapruder constantly wrestles with key questions: How private/public should the film and its handling be? At what point does a family’s property become national property? Is a home movie that turns out to be tragic and historic so much more than any other home movie? What ethical issues arise around selling the film? Zapruder lays out so many issues with a clear respect for her grandfather and father (while also defending them against some of the worse accusations brought against them).
This source is not unbiased, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be. This is the work of a woman coming to terms with a very complex part of her family’s history, as well as how it became part of our collective history in the United States and around the whole world.
I recommend this book.
November 12, 2017
I made great effort to like this book. In fact, I did like the first third, as the author gave details about her father, Abraham Zapruder, and that fateful time in 1963. It is without question that the author's father shot some of the most important film footage in the history of our country. The book initially delves in to family details that could only be shared by a Zapruder relative such as Alexandra. However, I found it surprising (and disappointing) that Ms. Zapruder allocates a good portion of the book to ancillary narrative involving assassination conspiracy theorists.
Ultimately, I did not finish this book. Maybe it is because so much is already known about the more recent history of this famous 8mm movie. Depending on your position, the film has undoubtedly had a role in raising questions or answering questions about the events that unfolded in Dallas. I was somewhat disappointed that so much weight of this personal history was given to that controversy.
Ultimately, I did not finish this book. Maybe it is because so much is already known about the more recent history of this famous 8mm movie. Depending on your position, the film has undoubtedly had a role in raising questions or answering questions about the events that unfolded in Dallas. I was somewhat disappointed that so much weight of this personal history was given to that controversy.
May 2, 2017
This is an account of the history of Abraham Zapruder's 26-second 8mm film of the murder of JFK. It is not an attempt to explain the facts of the assassination. Insofar as the author, his grand-daughter, reveals a position on that she might be counted a conservative, i.e. suggesting that the Warren Commission Report is flawed, but that Oswald was likely the sole murderer that day, both of the president and of officer Tippit. She does hold--and attempt to document--one strong opinion, that being that the original film, barring some damage thru age and inadvertance, is a full and accurate take on the assassination and that it and its sanctioned copies have not been tampered with. She does not, however, hold the expectation that it or any other material evidence will ever reveal the truth behind the events of 11/22/63.
May 3, 2019
I loved reading this book and seeing what happened to the Zapruder family and how it felt for them to be connected to this film and subject to so much scrutiny. Alexandra Zapruder did a great job telling the story of the film and the public’s reaction/entitlement to it.
June 19, 2020
This book by the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder was absolutely fascinating. It was not about the assassination, but rather the history of the film itself and the emotional, financial, and legal impacts it had on the family and the nation. A excellent read.
February 4, 2024
As to the historical significance of the Zapruder film, this has been said:
“It is an amateur home movie that went on to become a famous piece of visual documentation, one with enduring cultural status, and emotional and symbolic value. In short, it is the prime, archetypical assassination record.”
And as to author Alexandra Zapruder’s early childhood fascination with her grandfather, and his place in the history of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there was this all-important moment in her own personal history:
“Eventually, caught between my own curiosity and my sense that a conversation with my parents would never fully satisfy me, I went rogue in the school library with William Manchester instead. I was eleven years old, looking for my grandfather in, “The Death of a President,” I’m not sure how I knew I would find him there…
I found the book by looking it up in the old card catalogue in my elementary school library. I pulled the thick black covered volume off the shelf and sat on the floor between the stacks to read it. I vividly recall flipping to the index, turning the leaves until I reached the last page, scanning the Y’s and Z’s until I landed on the words I sought:
Abraham Zapruder.”
And after that astounding childhood discovery, Alexandra Zapruder’s curiosity about her late grandfather, and the famous home movie he shot lay dormant for many years. But all of that began to change when her father, the second-generation family caretaker of almost everything to do with the Zapruder Film was suddenly diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
His cancer progressed with shocking rapidity, and after his passing, Alexandra felt as though the responsibility for keeping up the film’s legacy had been passed to her, without anyone ever saying so.
She began collecting what she could, putting together the story as best she could without her father guiding her. And as time passed, and as her research continued, she gradually realized that the writer in her was emerging, therefore it was a possibility that she might write a book about her grandfather, her father and the home movie that had such a profound, yet largely unspoken impact on her and the other members of her family. She kept the idea to herself in the beginning, and often she tried to suppress the thought, but it kept coming back to her.
And as Alexandra pondered to herself about the book idea, the deterrents began popping up in her mind, one after another. The first was the fact that she was in no way an expert on the history of the Kennedy assassination. The second was the longstanding Zapruder family principle that conversation about the film was not to be invited or encouraged. It seemed as though there were nothing but obstacles to writing the book.
But still the idea wouldn’t go away.
Finally, Alexandra confided her idea to her two brothers, and much to her surprise and delight, she found support and encouragement from both of them. This motivated her to keep pursuing, keep researching, keep interviewing, and keep learning as she continued to “tug at the end of the thread, following it along as far as she could.”
Before too long she realized that she was breaking with the Zapruder Family tradition by “practicing the act of talking about the film.”
She also realized that while others had written about the Zapruder Film before, but none of them knew what she knew. They didn’t really know who her grandfather was, nor did they know about his personal relationship with Richard Stolley of LIFE Magazine, and how the dynamic of that friendship would play a key role in the history of the film.
There was a lot missing in the Zapruder story that the world knew, and she felt strongly that it was important to tell the story more fully, more completely.
The curiosity was back, as if Alexandra was once again back in that elementary school library…in search of her grandfather and his amazing story.
All of this I gathered as I read the Alexandra’s introduction to “Twenty-Six Seconds.” And as I considered what might unfold, I found myself eagerly anticipating what this groundbreaking telling of the Zapruder story might bring to my understanding of this critical moment in history. And by the end I was so glad I’d read this superbly told story. There were many things I learned, and many people and situations that amazed me. Here were just a few:
Firstly, there was the whole subject of making movies using 8mm movie cameras. This was subject that interested me, so I was intrigued to learn more about Abraham Zapruder’s particular camera, the Bell and Howell Zoomatic Director’s Series Model 414PD. It was a top-of-the-line amateur movie camera that Mr. Zapruder purchased in 1962, and the one that he most famously used to film the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dealy Plaza in Dallas Texas.
I have shot home movies on an 8mm movie camera as well, and have loved the process of planning my shots, and making the necessary adjustments to the camera while composing my movies. Also, I love getting the processed movie back in the mail, and the magic of watching the images flicker on the screen before me for the first time. The 8mm camera I most often use is a Soviet made, 1970’s Ekran 4. It’s features and functions are a bit different than Zapruder’s Bell and Howell, (as was the movie film he used, Kodachrome II Safety Film, where I use FPP Cine 8 Color Negative 40 ISO), but the overall process similar enough for me to understand just how special his capturing of this historically significant moment was, especially how he remained still, continuing to film the scene, despite his own shock at what he was seeing through the lens, not to mention the panic and pandemonium were breaking out all around him. The fact that he captured this historical documentation is nothing short of a miracle, I came to appreciate this much more clearly after reading this book.
The result of Mr. Zapruder’s filming was of the Kennedy motorcade was contained within a strip of film that was 26 seconds long, containing 486 frames, each only 4.8 x 3.5 millimeters in size, yet despite the tiny dimensions of the original in-camera strip of film itself, the impact of the motion picture images contained on it have, in total had a massive impact on millions of people. The whole idea of the dichotomy between the fragility and tiny nature of the medium, and its enormous way of affecting us, has always fascinated me. It was a subject visited over and over again in this book, and after reading it, I’m only more intrigued by this phenomenon than ever before.
Further to this, I was captivated as I read about the ways that the Zapruder Film was used in various ways in order to make clearer sense of the images it originally captured. To this end, I learned about processes such as Stereophotogrammetry, which is the estimating of three-dimensional coordinates of points on an object, employing measurements made in two or more photographic images taken from different positions.
And as far as Abraham Zapruder is concerned, I really enjoyed getting to know the various aspects of this amazing man, who his granddaughter describes as “incapable of being bored.” I was very interested in how Abraham got his successful dressmaking business, Jennifer Juniors, located at 501 Elm Street in Dallas started, and how it went on to be a successful venture that employed a group of impressive people, including Marilyn Sitzman, Abraham Zapruder’s receptionist, a remarkable woman, who played a key role in the actual filming of Zapruder’s film on that fateful day. I was interested in reading about how Abrahm invested in his photography hobby, both by way of buying the right camera, but also by practicing, and perfecting the art of composing great home movies. Mr. Zapruder was always an amateur photographer, but he was a very accomplished amateur all the same. I also really enjoyed reading the stories of how he tinkered with the mechanical and electronic devise around his home, some successfully, and some less so. The man was enterprising, creative, curious, generous, kind, loyal, humble and thoughtful, he was a man I appreciated getting to know better.
Then there were the varied, colorful, and unforgettable cast of characters in this story, including: A LIFE Magazine stringer named Patsy Swank, Bill Hooper the chief archivist of “America’s Attic,” the “Mink Coat Mob,” the shenanigans of “Inspector No. 3” a columnist for Paris Match, and Robert Groden, the man who visits JFK’s grave at Arlington, vowing aloud to the dead president that he will not rest until he gets to the bottom of what happened in Dallas. Finally, there was the one that really made me laugh, the story of three nuns, all in full habit, in the courtroom gallery of the Clay Shaw Trial, all jockeying for position so they could get a better view of the Zapruder Film as it played on the projector screen. And while the subject matter was serious, I couldn’t help but find the humor in imagining such a scene.
The book was also filled with dramatic, and offbeat situations, theories, and happenings, including: The embarrassing truth of the missing frames, the cloak-and-dagger film copying operation, the “Jiggle Theory,” the “Three-Million-Dollar Baseball” argument, the iconic safe deposit box 476, and the almost unbelievable scene where a planeload of newsmen and television cameras hastily board, bound for Dallas. There is not time to properly stow the large broadcast cameras, so they are lined up in a long row down the aisle of the airplane.
Then came the impact of the various legal changes that came about, all affecting the eventual holding of the Zapruder Film. These included the “JFK Act,” and the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This portion of the story, quite surprising to me, was just as intriguing as the rest of the story.
Finally, there was Alexandra’s telling of her family, the Zapruder Family, the main characters being Abraham, his wife Lillian, and their son Henry, (Alexandra’s father). I came away from reading about this family with a deep sense of appreciation and understanding, I also more clearly understood, from Alexandra Zapruder’s standpoint, the many reasons that she would feel compelled to give years and years of her talent, experience, and energy into writing this book.
Finally, it was near the end of the book where Alexandra writes that she wrote this book for herself, her family, and for the historical record, as fully, honestly, and forthrightly as she could. I believe she achieved this goal, and perhaps quite a bit more.
A captivating, fascinating, enlightening and very well written book of one of the most important events in the 20th Century. I highly recommend it.
“It is an amateur home movie that went on to become a famous piece of visual documentation, one with enduring cultural status, and emotional and symbolic value. In short, it is the prime, archetypical assassination record.”
And as to author Alexandra Zapruder’s early childhood fascination with her grandfather, and his place in the history of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there was this all-important moment in her own personal history:
“Eventually, caught between my own curiosity and my sense that a conversation with my parents would never fully satisfy me, I went rogue in the school library with William Manchester instead. I was eleven years old, looking for my grandfather in, “The Death of a President,” I’m not sure how I knew I would find him there…
I found the book by looking it up in the old card catalogue in my elementary school library. I pulled the thick black covered volume off the shelf and sat on the floor between the stacks to read it. I vividly recall flipping to the index, turning the leaves until I reached the last page, scanning the Y’s and Z’s until I landed on the words I sought:
Abraham Zapruder.”
And after that astounding childhood discovery, Alexandra Zapruder’s curiosity about her late grandfather, and the famous home movie he shot lay dormant for many years. But all of that began to change when her father, the second-generation family caretaker of almost everything to do with the Zapruder Film was suddenly diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
His cancer progressed with shocking rapidity, and after his passing, Alexandra felt as though the responsibility for keeping up the film’s legacy had been passed to her, without anyone ever saying so.
She began collecting what she could, putting together the story as best she could without her father guiding her. And as time passed, and as her research continued, she gradually realized that the writer in her was emerging, therefore it was a possibility that she might write a book about her grandfather, her father and the home movie that had such a profound, yet largely unspoken impact on her and the other members of her family. She kept the idea to herself in the beginning, and often she tried to suppress the thought, but it kept coming back to her.
And as Alexandra pondered to herself about the book idea, the deterrents began popping up in her mind, one after another. The first was the fact that she was in no way an expert on the history of the Kennedy assassination. The second was the longstanding Zapruder family principle that conversation about the film was not to be invited or encouraged. It seemed as though there were nothing but obstacles to writing the book.
But still the idea wouldn’t go away.
Finally, Alexandra confided her idea to her two brothers, and much to her surprise and delight, she found support and encouragement from both of them. This motivated her to keep pursuing, keep researching, keep interviewing, and keep learning as she continued to “tug at the end of the thread, following it along as far as she could.”
Before too long she realized that she was breaking with the Zapruder Family tradition by “practicing the act of talking about the film.”
She also realized that while others had written about the Zapruder Film before, but none of them knew what she knew. They didn’t really know who her grandfather was, nor did they know about his personal relationship with Richard Stolley of LIFE Magazine, and how the dynamic of that friendship would play a key role in the history of the film.
There was a lot missing in the Zapruder story that the world knew, and she felt strongly that it was important to tell the story more fully, more completely.
The curiosity was back, as if Alexandra was once again back in that elementary school library…in search of her grandfather and his amazing story.
All of this I gathered as I read the Alexandra’s introduction to “Twenty-Six Seconds.” And as I considered what might unfold, I found myself eagerly anticipating what this groundbreaking telling of the Zapruder story might bring to my understanding of this critical moment in history. And by the end I was so glad I’d read this superbly told story. There were many things I learned, and many people and situations that amazed me. Here were just a few:
Firstly, there was the whole subject of making movies using 8mm movie cameras. This was subject that interested me, so I was intrigued to learn more about Abraham Zapruder’s particular camera, the Bell and Howell Zoomatic Director’s Series Model 414PD. It was a top-of-the-line amateur movie camera that Mr. Zapruder purchased in 1962, and the one that he most famously used to film the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dealy Plaza in Dallas Texas.
I have shot home movies on an 8mm movie camera as well, and have loved the process of planning my shots, and making the necessary adjustments to the camera while composing my movies. Also, I love getting the processed movie back in the mail, and the magic of watching the images flicker on the screen before me for the first time. The 8mm camera I most often use is a Soviet made, 1970’s Ekran 4. It’s features and functions are a bit different than Zapruder’s Bell and Howell, (as was the movie film he used, Kodachrome II Safety Film, where I use FPP Cine 8 Color Negative 40 ISO), but the overall process similar enough for me to understand just how special his capturing of this historically significant moment was, especially how he remained still, continuing to film the scene, despite his own shock at what he was seeing through the lens, not to mention the panic and pandemonium were breaking out all around him. The fact that he captured this historical documentation is nothing short of a miracle, I came to appreciate this much more clearly after reading this book.
The result of Mr. Zapruder’s filming was of the Kennedy motorcade was contained within a strip of film that was 26 seconds long, containing 486 frames, each only 4.8 x 3.5 millimeters in size, yet despite the tiny dimensions of the original in-camera strip of film itself, the impact of the motion picture images contained on it have, in total had a massive impact on millions of people. The whole idea of the dichotomy between the fragility and tiny nature of the medium, and its enormous way of affecting us, has always fascinated me. It was a subject visited over and over again in this book, and after reading it, I’m only more intrigued by this phenomenon than ever before.
Further to this, I was captivated as I read about the ways that the Zapruder Film was used in various ways in order to make clearer sense of the images it originally captured. To this end, I learned about processes such as Stereophotogrammetry, which is the estimating of three-dimensional coordinates of points on an object, employing measurements made in two or more photographic images taken from different positions.
And as far as Abraham Zapruder is concerned, I really enjoyed getting to know the various aspects of this amazing man, who his granddaughter describes as “incapable of being bored.” I was very interested in how Abraham got his successful dressmaking business, Jennifer Juniors, located at 501 Elm Street in Dallas started, and how it went on to be a successful venture that employed a group of impressive people, including Marilyn Sitzman, Abraham Zapruder’s receptionist, a remarkable woman, who played a key role in the actual filming of Zapruder’s film on that fateful day. I was interested in reading about how Abrahm invested in his photography hobby, both by way of buying the right camera, but also by practicing, and perfecting the art of composing great home movies. Mr. Zapruder was always an amateur photographer, but he was a very accomplished amateur all the same. I also really enjoyed reading the stories of how he tinkered with the mechanical and electronic devise around his home, some successfully, and some less so. The man was enterprising, creative, curious, generous, kind, loyal, humble and thoughtful, he was a man I appreciated getting to know better.
Then there were the varied, colorful, and unforgettable cast of characters in this story, including: A LIFE Magazine stringer named Patsy Swank, Bill Hooper the chief archivist of “America’s Attic,” the “Mink Coat Mob,” the shenanigans of “Inspector No. 3” a columnist for Paris Match, and Robert Groden, the man who visits JFK’s grave at Arlington, vowing aloud to the dead president that he will not rest until he gets to the bottom of what happened in Dallas. Finally, there was the one that really made me laugh, the story of three nuns, all in full habit, in the courtroom gallery of the Clay Shaw Trial, all jockeying for position so they could get a better view of the Zapruder Film as it played on the projector screen. And while the subject matter was serious, I couldn’t help but find the humor in imagining such a scene.
The book was also filled with dramatic, and offbeat situations, theories, and happenings, including: The embarrassing truth of the missing frames, the cloak-and-dagger film copying operation, the “Jiggle Theory,” the “Three-Million-Dollar Baseball” argument, the iconic safe deposit box 476, and the almost unbelievable scene where a planeload of newsmen and television cameras hastily board, bound for Dallas. There is not time to properly stow the large broadcast cameras, so they are lined up in a long row down the aisle of the airplane.
Then came the impact of the various legal changes that came about, all affecting the eventual holding of the Zapruder Film. These included the “JFK Act,” and the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This portion of the story, quite surprising to me, was just as intriguing as the rest of the story.
Finally, there was Alexandra’s telling of her family, the Zapruder Family, the main characters being Abraham, his wife Lillian, and their son Henry, (Alexandra’s father). I came away from reading about this family with a deep sense of appreciation and understanding, I also more clearly understood, from Alexandra Zapruder’s standpoint, the many reasons that she would feel compelled to give years and years of her talent, experience, and energy into writing this book.
Finally, it was near the end of the book where Alexandra writes that she wrote this book for herself, her family, and for the historical record, as fully, honestly, and forthrightly as she could. I believe she achieved this goal, and perhaps quite a bit more.
A captivating, fascinating, enlightening and very well written book of one of the most important events in the 20th Century. I highly recommend it.
May 13, 2018
Written and narrated by Abraham Zapruder's granddaughter, Alexandra, Twenty-Six Seconds is part biography, part memoir, part historical nonfiction. Her last name was made famous years before she was born and yet she writes with the clear eye of a spectator and the heart of a grandchild. She peels the layers of this story within a story delicately, but with unflinching honesty. With genuine emotion and eloquent dialogue, Alexandra delivers a wholly engrossing listening experience that captivates from the second you press play.
By chance and coincidence, Abraham Zapruder captured on film the most significant event of modern time with his 8mm Bell & Howell camera. His biggest concern was how the film would be handled. He tried to put the responsibilities of ownership with a respected company he believed would act with decency and integrity. After twelve years of dealing with the film and all that goes with it, Life sold it back to the Zapruder Family for one dollar. Where it remained until via arbitration the family sold the one-of-a-kind historical artifact to the government for sixteen million dollars. In 2000 the family donated the last of their photographs, copies of the film and copyrights to the 6th Floor Museum. This ended their legal connection to the assassination but not their personal tumultuous relationship with the film. Like a circle, it is unending. Her grandfather described it this way "a wound that leaves residual pain even after it heals."
The Zapruder film is barely twenty-six seconds and measures six feet in length. The 483 frames have been studied by the greatest minds, as well as, armchair conspiracy theorists. It has been dissected and analyzed for what is shows and what it does not. The Warren Commission relied heavily upon the film as evidence of a lone gunman. Subsequent government inquiries did not concur, citing the high probability Oswald acted as part of a conspiracy. Fifty years later, with all our technology, we are no closer to a definitive answer. Society continues to be shocked and fascinated by the film. It has found an audience in the art world, the entertainment industry and in written publications. The "Zapruder Film" has been woven into the cultural fabric of our nation. It's even found a place in Pop-culture. Slang terms like zaprudered are part of the vernacular. (zaprudered - watching something over and over intently analyzing it.) Now a new generation has instant access via Google and YouTube. The film can be viewed and shared around the world instantaneously with no thought whatsoever of ethics, morals, and exploitation. I dare say, Mr. Zapruder would be heartbroken.
Alexandra writes of her grandfather through a long, loving lens as only a granddaughter could. Her narration is filled with emotion conveyed through authentic voice inflections and expert pacing. Twenty-Six Seconds IS a personal history of the Zapruder Film. Alexandra has delivered a meticulously researched, well-organized novel that is informative, interesting, and entertaining. I enjoyed this book from the first CD to the last. It was often an emotional journey that had me smiling one chapter, near tears the next. I also felt my blood pressure climb more than once when the media attacked Mr. Zapruder for selling the film. I especially enjoyed Alexandra's retelling of the arbitration hearing which was almost comical. The government was unprepared and ill-equipped. They seemed unable (or unwilling) to quantify the film as one would a VanGoh...if there were only one VanGoh that is.
This is nonfiction at its finest! If you are interested in the Kennedy assassination, on any side of this complex historical event --whether you are a staunch supporter of the Warren Report or you find yourself on the outer limit of the most convoluted conspiracy theory ...you will enjoy this book.
By chance and coincidence, Abraham Zapruder captured on film the most significant event of modern time with his 8mm Bell & Howell camera. His biggest concern was how the film would be handled. He tried to put the responsibilities of ownership with a respected company he believed would act with decency and integrity. After twelve years of dealing with the film and all that goes with it, Life sold it back to the Zapruder Family for one dollar. Where it remained until via arbitration the family sold the one-of-a-kind historical artifact to the government for sixteen million dollars. In 2000 the family donated the last of their photographs, copies of the film and copyrights to the 6th Floor Museum. This ended their legal connection to the assassination but not their personal tumultuous relationship with the film. Like a circle, it is unending. Her grandfather described it this way "a wound that leaves residual pain even after it heals."
The Zapruder film is barely twenty-six seconds and measures six feet in length. The 483 frames have been studied by the greatest minds, as well as, armchair conspiracy theorists. It has been dissected and analyzed for what is shows and what it does not. The Warren Commission relied heavily upon the film as evidence of a lone gunman. Subsequent government inquiries did not concur, citing the high probability Oswald acted as part of a conspiracy. Fifty years later, with all our technology, we are no closer to a definitive answer. Society continues to be shocked and fascinated by the film. It has found an audience in the art world, the entertainment industry and in written publications. The "Zapruder Film" has been woven into the cultural fabric of our nation. It's even found a place in Pop-culture. Slang terms like zaprudered are part of the vernacular. (zaprudered - watching something over and over intently analyzing it.) Now a new generation has instant access via Google and YouTube. The film can be viewed and shared around the world instantaneously with no thought whatsoever of ethics, morals, and exploitation. I dare say, Mr. Zapruder would be heartbroken.
Alexandra writes of her grandfather through a long, loving lens as only a granddaughter could. Her narration is filled with emotion conveyed through authentic voice inflections and expert pacing. Twenty-Six Seconds IS a personal history of the Zapruder Film. Alexandra has delivered a meticulously researched, well-organized novel that is informative, interesting, and entertaining. I enjoyed this book from the first CD to the last. It was often an emotional journey that had me smiling one chapter, near tears the next. I also felt my blood pressure climb more than once when the media attacked Mr. Zapruder for selling the film. I especially enjoyed Alexandra's retelling of the arbitration hearing which was almost comical. The government was unprepared and ill-equipped. They seemed unable (or unwilling) to quantify the film as one would a VanGoh...if there were only one VanGoh that is.
This is nonfiction at its finest! If you are interested in the Kennedy assassination, on any side of this complex historical event --whether you are a staunch supporter of the Warren Report or you find yourself on the outer limit of the most convoluted conspiracy theory ...you will enjoy this book.
February 12, 2017
I had been interested in the various conspiracy theories of the Kennedy assassination for a long time. Then in a trip to Dealey Plaza in 2013 I put those questions to rest, as I wrote about on my blog at the time. My interest was recently rekindled when I saw the cover of a new book by Alexandra Zapruder – Twenty-Six Seconds – A Personal History of the Zapruder Film. I had to read it.
Twenty-Six Seconds doesn’t propose any new theories on what happened on that fateful day in Dallas November 22, 1963. Instead the book gives a fascinating account of an ordinary citizen, Abraham Zapruder, and the ordeals he and his family went through as a result of Zapruder’s shocking home movie showing the death of the President in vivid detail. The author, Alexandra Zapruder, is Abraham Zapruder’s granddaughter. Though Alexandra was not born until six years after the assassination, she skillfully tells the Zapruder story through interviews with family members and other key players involved in making the Zapruder film the most famous home movie ever recorded.
I liked best the human stories in the book. “At some point over coffee that morning, Lillian asked Abe if he had brought his movie camera from home, as he had said he was planning to do a few days before,” Alexandra relates the conversation between Abraham and his wife the morning of the assassination. “Well, no, actually, he hadn’t. He had given up on the idea at the last minute, thinking that with the crowds packing the motorcade route, he would never get near enough to see, let alone film the president,” Alexandra writes in describing Abraham’s reply. Lillian eventually convinced her husband to retrieve his camera. In reading about the turmoil Abraham and his family went through as a result of the film, I wondered if Abraham had later wished he had left his camera at home that day.
Alexandra Zapruder did her homework in writing Twenty-Six Seconds. The book is very well researched, with detailed accounts of the legal struggles regarding ownership of the film. I did not find the legal details as interesting as the people stories, but I did feel these details were necessary to tell the complete history of Abraham’s home movie. “The film was but one small element in the vast, overwhelming coverage of the president’s death,” Alexandra writes in describing the growing importance of Abraham’s work. “In later years, as the grief for the president waned and questions remained about his death, the film would grow and change in significance until it would become almost one with the assassination itself.”
“I must have heard my mother say a hundred times,” Alexandra writes. “Your grandfather should have been famous for who he was, for being a good person and a funny, wonderful man, and not for the film.” Twenty-Six Seconds does achieve the goal of revealing the human side of Abraham Zapruder. At the end the book poses a question for the reader to ponder – “After learning how Abraham Zapruder struggled to reconcile the moral dilemma of selling the film, how do you think you might have behaved under those same circumstances?” Hmmmm, I’m sure I would not have handled the situation with the same grace and wisdom as Abraham Zapruder did.
Twenty-Six Seconds doesn’t propose any new theories on what happened on that fateful day in Dallas November 22, 1963. Instead the book gives a fascinating account of an ordinary citizen, Abraham Zapruder, and the ordeals he and his family went through as a result of Zapruder’s shocking home movie showing the death of the President in vivid detail. The author, Alexandra Zapruder, is Abraham Zapruder’s granddaughter. Though Alexandra was not born until six years after the assassination, she skillfully tells the Zapruder story through interviews with family members and other key players involved in making the Zapruder film the most famous home movie ever recorded.
I liked best the human stories in the book. “At some point over coffee that morning, Lillian asked Abe if he had brought his movie camera from home, as he had said he was planning to do a few days before,” Alexandra relates the conversation between Abraham and his wife the morning of the assassination. “Well, no, actually, he hadn’t. He had given up on the idea at the last minute, thinking that with the crowds packing the motorcade route, he would never get near enough to see, let alone film the president,” Alexandra writes in describing Abraham’s reply. Lillian eventually convinced her husband to retrieve his camera. In reading about the turmoil Abraham and his family went through as a result of the film, I wondered if Abraham had later wished he had left his camera at home that day.
Alexandra Zapruder did her homework in writing Twenty-Six Seconds. The book is very well researched, with detailed accounts of the legal struggles regarding ownership of the film. I did not find the legal details as interesting as the people stories, but I did feel these details were necessary to tell the complete history of Abraham’s home movie. “The film was but one small element in the vast, overwhelming coverage of the president’s death,” Alexandra writes in describing the growing importance of Abraham’s work. “In later years, as the grief for the president waned and questions remained about his death, the film would grow and change in significance until it would become almost one with the assassination itself.”
“I must have heard my mother say a hundred times,” Alexandra writes. “Your grandfather should have been famous for who he was, for being a good person and a funny, wonderful man, and not for the film.” Twenty-Six Seconds does achieve the goal of revealing the human side of Abraham Zapruder. At the end the book poses a question for the reader to ponder – “After learning how Abraham Zapruder struggled to reconcile the moral dilemma of selling the film, how do you think you might have behaved under those same circumstances?” Hmmmm, I’m sure I would not have handled the situation with the same grace and wisdom as Abraham Zapruder did.
April 22, 2017
For those of you who are younger than me, you may not know what The Zapruder Film is. It's the 26-second amateur film that captured the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963. This book is about the film itself, its impact on our history, its impact on the filmographer's family and its many stages of legal, investigative and pop culture intrigue. The bonus in this book is that is written by the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder who shot the film. As a result, it becomes its subtitle - a personal history of the film.
I held an avid interest in the entire JFK assassination and its related investigation and conspiracy theories. As such, I am well-acquainted with the film and much of its history. Still, there was much additional to be discovered related to the handling of the film, the effect on the Zapruder family, the legal and business intricacies and, finally, its disposition (both the 6 feet of film and its related intangible rights). There is plenty of new and interesting information in this book - beyond my expectations. Further, it is very-well written by the granddaughter who is an author in her own right.
If you have an interest in this piece of American history, I highly recommend this book.
I held an avid interest in the entire JFK assassination and its related investigation and conspiracy theories. As such, I am well-acquainted with the film and much of its history. Still, there was much additional to be discovered related to the handling of the film, the effect on the Zapruder family, the legal and business intricacies and, finally, its disposition (both the 6 feet of film and its related intangible rights). There is plenty of new and interesting information in this book - beyond my expectations. Further, it is very-well written by the granddaughter who is an author in her own right.
If you have an interest in this piece of American history, I highly recommend this book.
May 11, 2018
Recounting the history of the death of our president, and wading through nearly endless controversy, Twenty-Six Seconds that explores all of the nuances of the Zapruder film and the Kennedy Assassination. The Zapruder film is a home movie chronicling the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The film was taken by Abraham Zapruder, and it was shot from Grassy Knoll as the President made his way through Dealey Plaza in a motorcade. This book is chock full of interesting facts and it chronicles the film through its history; the book starts before the assassination and ends 50 years later around 2013. The history includes a lot of drama, as the film changed hands four or five times, and it includes the public opinion surrounding the truly iconic controversies initiated by the film that have woven themselves into the tapestry of American History. Twenty-Six Seconds is fairly dense and took me a while to read, but it offers a very valuable and previously unheard perspective from the family of Abraham Zapruder. This book not only talks about the history of the Zapruder film, but, as the title states, it is the "Personal History of the Zapruder Film." Insight into the family culture surrounding the film really makes the read interesting and it allows the reader to develop their own view of the film and its history, undistorted by public grief and opinion surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. Alexandra Zapruder, the author, was motivated to investigate her family's history after her father's death, and she does a fantastic job presenting a wealth of credible information, and she cleanly resolves a very complicated story into its individually nuanced components. I really appreciated this read because it was very informative and I did not really know much about the Kennedy Assassination previously. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a comprehensive read and is willing to stick with it. I came across this book in a little free library in Berkeley California, and I am glad I did.
July 30, 2024
Twenty-Six Seconds is interesting, engaging, and educational all at once; Alexandra Zapruder is a talented writer. Though it often felt as though she was trying a bit too hard to justify her family's management of the film, her book provides an interesting look into the lives of the Zapruders, the untimely death of JFK, the intricacies of copyright law, and the lasting impact of the Zapruder film on the nation's psyche.
October 29, 2017
There are too many open ends for this biography of the 26 seconds for this to be believable. Let's just hit a few. She does not mention that Marilyn Sitzman held Abe's legs steady like a tripod for the shooting. She cites Dan Rather and his discussion with Zapruder totally out of sequence. She says that Rather was NOLA Bureau chief of CBS when he was in Dallas. She doesn't like Rather, but then who does? {What's the Frequency Kenneth?}
She ignores anything about the missing Moorman polaroids and while she tells us that 22 photographers were there, she does not tell us why Abe was the lucky one. There is no doubt though, the dress manufacturer was a shrewd bargainer no matter how much she wants to portray the Life Sale as a labour of love. In the end, Ms Zapruder is one of the many who has too much at stake to tell the real story, so this one is easy enough to dismiss particularly as it is over long and tiresome. Perhaps at 200 pages it would work, but then she would have to remove the hagiography.
She ignores anything about the missing Moorman polaroids and while she tells us that 22 photographers were there, she does not tell us why Abe was the lucky one. There is no doubt though, the dress manufacturer was a shrewd bargainer no matter how much she wants to portray the Life Sale as a labour of love. In the end, Ms Zapruder is one of the many who has too much at stake to tell the real story, so this one is easy enough to dismiss particularly as it is over long and tiresome. Perhaps at 200 pages it would work, but then she would have to remove the hagiography.
December 3, 2018
I have always been mesmerized by the Zapruder film. It remains the iconic symbol of the Kennedy assassination much as the footage of the World Trade Towers tumbling to the ground in 2001.
This book gives you an insider's view of the film, and the man behind hit. What a struggle it was for the Zapruder family to have to deal with the film itself and the notoriety that came with it.
Very central to the book, and understandably so, is the author's (who btw is the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder) making sure that the thinking behind "bidding out" for the film was understood. And, she does so artfully. Also, she does a great job of describing the struggles that the film brought upon her family.
There is so much in this book that you'll find yourself saying "I didn't know that," or "i didn't even think of that." From that perspective, this is an excellent book encompassing not only the film itself but also the importance of the film to so many people and in the Kennedy assassination investigation.
As a lover of history, this was a great book. Highly recommend.
This book gives you an insider's view of the film, and the man behind hit. What a struggle it was for the Zapruder family to have to deal with the film itself and the notoriety that came with it.
Very central to the book, and understandably so, is the author's (who btw is the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder) making sure that the thinking behind "bidding out" for the film was understood. And, she does so artfully. Also, she does a great job of describing the struggles that the film brought upon her family.
There is so much in this book that you'll find yourself saying "I didn't know that," or "i didn't even think of that." From that perspective, this is an excellent book encompassing not only the film itself but also the importance of the film to so many people and in the Kennedy assassination investigation.
As a lover of history, this was a great book. Highly recommend.
February 6, 2017
I can't imagine being behind the camera and sort of stumbling into a horrific moment, and I got the impression Abe Zapruder felt very burdened by it. The author, however, seemed proud and defensive, which I didn't always sympathize with. She obviously can't be objective, but I wondered if writing the book was a way to reclaim her grandfather's ownership of the film. The intellectual property considerations were especially interesting to me, how Life magazine used it, and the arbitration with the government in trying to determine what the original film is worth were the most fascinating. I could genuinely pull for either side, but I ultimately felt like if it were me, I don't think I would ask or expect so much money. It was a good read and there were some sections that felt too detailed or redundant, but otherwise I would recommend it!
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