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JFK Book Reviews - Lee By Robert Oswald · The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: What's up, everybody? Welcome to JFK Book Reviews, a division
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the lung Gumen Podcast. I'm your host Rob Clark,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and along with me my co host Joe Borelli. How
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  Speaker 1: you doing, Joe Good, Sir good good. This week, folks,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about and says, neither of
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  Speaker 1: us have a physical copy. We're going to do this bam.
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  Speaker 1: The book Lee a portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by
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  Speaker 1: his brother Robert Oswald, and also Merrick and Barbara Land
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: as co authors. Now, Merrick Land is kind of a
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  Speaker 1: mystery suspense writer, you know, from the fifties and sixties.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sure about his wife, and I'm not sure
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  Speaker 1: why they're helping Robert Oswald write this book, but I
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  Speaker 1: guess they won. I guess they won the lottery. This
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  Speaker 1: book was published on January the first, nineteen sixty seven,
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  Speaker 1: by Coward McCann Publishing Company. It clocks in at two
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  Speaker 1: hundred and forty six pages long and the only thing
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  Speaker 1: it includes is an index Joe and it is broken
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  Speaker 1: up into I believe three sections, and there's several chapters
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  Speaker 1: in each section. It starts off, I think on November
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  Speaker 1: twenty second, nineteen sixty three, and then it goes back
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  Speaker 1: to Lee's childhood and then the aftermath part. You can
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  Speaker 1: find this book Joe on Amazon if you're willing to
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  Speaker 1: drop one hundred and ninety nine dollars. At the time
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  Speaker 1: of this recording, there is one copy on there, and
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  Speaker 1: on eBay there's one on there for three hundred and
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  Speaker 1: eighty eight dollars.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: You can go to Internet archive and you can read
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  Speaker 1: it for free. It is not downloadable, but if you're
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  Speaker 1: curious and you want to read it, you can. It's free,
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  Speaker 1: or reach out to us at the Lonegoming Podcast at
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  Speaker 1: gmail dot com. We do have PDF copies, which is
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  Speaker 1: how we read it to do this book review for
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  Speaker 1: gratis at no charge, So it's up if you want it.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, given Robert Oswall's purview, this book does
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  Speaker 1: take a loan nut lean Joe.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: It definitely does, as has Robert Oswalt for most of
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  Speaker 2: his life. And so what was the author trying to
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  Speaker 2: achieve with this book? And that's uh, that's not the
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  Speaker 2: easiest question to answer, because I think Robert the author
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  Speaker 2: struggled to humanize Lee and at the same time distance
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  Speaker 2: him from the person who Robert believed assassinated John F. Kennedy.
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  Speaker 2: So the book, like you mentioned, has a has a
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  Speaker 2: few different parts. He definitely gets into the Oswaltz family,
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  Speaker 2: challenging circumstances in New Orleans. Lee and Robert's father died
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  Speaker 2: very shortly before Lee Harvey Oswalt's birth in nineteen thirty nine,
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  Speaker 2: and he talks about how they were raised by their mother, Marguerite,
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  Speaker 2: and goes into family dysfunction, the lack of a stable family,
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  Speaker 2: And I think this is kind of where he's kind
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  Speaker 2: of making some excuses for Lee. He depicts Lee's life
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  Speaker 2: as a series of attempts to escape his circumstances, from
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  Speaker 2: truancy to the Marines, to defection to the USSR, eventually,
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  Speaker 2: in his opinion, culminating in his infamous act allegedly of
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  Speaker 2: shooting the president. You know, he talks a lot about
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  Speaker 2: Lee's troubled youth and how many times they moved and
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  Speaker 2: how many schools he was in by the time he
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  Speaker 2: dropped out, lack of stability. He talks about how Lee
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  Speaker 2: was withdrawn yet temperamental, immersing himself in books and socialist
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  Speaker 2: literature by his teens. But Rob I thought it would
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  Speaker 2: be interesting to hear from Robert Oswalt in his own
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  Speaker 2: words in video form, because this really paints a good picture.
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  Speaker 3: Did he proclaim his innocence so out right?
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  Speaker 2: Now?
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  Speaker 3: Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill the president? And if so,
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  Speaker 3: was he by himself?
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  Speaker 4: Wow, that's right to degrade Simon. Yes, he did, unfortunately
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  Speaker 4: by himself, by him Sale. He conspiracy now conspiracy with Lee.
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  Speaker 4: He made those decisions within him. Sale. And that's why
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  Speaker 4: it's so unbelievable to even consider without just absolute concrete
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  Speaker 4: evitage that he was part of a conspiracy. He was not.
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  Speaker 4: You've got a pattern there, and it's part of his
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  Speaker 4: pattern throughout his life. He's looking for attention, always looking
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  Speaker 4: for attention that he never got it home.
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  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, you believe if you look at the pattern, it
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  Speaker 3: becomes apparent. Yes, where his life.
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  Speaker 4: Was, If not the president, it was going to be somebody.
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  Speaker 3: But Robert, if you're looking for attention, if you're crying out,
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  Speaker 3: you not only shoot the president and you say yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I did it, Yet you've either saw it live on
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  Speaker 3: television and saw the tape.
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  Speaker 4: He didn I didn't shoot anybody, so I haven't been
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  Speaker 4: told what I Well, that's part of his nature, he
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  Speaker 4: was playing the mind game. I don't think he would
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  Speaker 4: ever admit it. He was going to be smarter than
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  Speaker 4: the rest of them.
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  Speaker 2: So I think lesser Holt here, And it's funny how
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  Speaker 2: young he is brings up a really good question, and
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  Speaker 2: is what so many of us researchers on both sides
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  Speaker 2: have struggled to kind of figure out over the years,
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  Speaker 2: is what was the motive? Right, he was a confessed
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  Speaker 2: communist sympathizer, so why would he kill maybe the most
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  Speaker 2: or one of the most liberal presidents to that time.
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  Speaker 2: And according to everyone who we talked to or heard from,
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  Speaker 2: he didn't mind Kennedy. So I give mister Holt a
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  Speaker 2: lot of credit for that question there. But that kind
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  Speaker 2: of gives you the gist of what Robert Oswald felt.
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  Speaker 2: So the writing style is very well written, it's very
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  Speaker 2: easy to read and follow along with. And in terms
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  Speaker 2: of sources, as you briefly mentioned, it's not that type
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  Speaker 2: of book. It's like JFK type of research book where
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  Speaker 2: it's going to list all these documents, although it does
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  Speaker 2: list some testimonies and things like that. But yeah, I
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  Speaker 2: will go to you now, sir for your feelings and ratings.
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  Speaker 1: On the book, Thank you, Joe. Yeah, like you said,
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  Speaker 1: I think this book is a mixture of a biography
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  Speaker 1: and an autobiography, a biography of his brother and an
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  Speaker 1: autobiography of his experiences dealing with all this stuff and
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  Speaker 1: you know, being Lee Oswald's brother. And I think a
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  Speaker 1: good part of this book is trying to make excuses
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  Speaker 1: for Lee's behavior, and it's going to great lengths trying
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  Speaker 1: to explain his early life, the dynamic with the mother,
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  Speaker 1: the absence of father figure except for one Edwin Ekdahl,
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  Speaker 1: who Lee was particularly fond of, but only lasted I
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  Speaker 1: think maybe two or three years. And you know, Marguerite
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  Speaker 1: is kind of not all there unless she's getting her way.
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  Speaker 1: And the Merit family, uh, you know, stepped in and
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  Speaker 1: helped them when they could. The boys were sent to
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  Speaker 1: an orphang and orphanage at times, and just the supervision
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  Speaker 1: or or or love or care that that that you
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  Speaker 1: know kids need and normally get when they're in their
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  Speaker 1: childhood was pretty non existent with Lee. And when you're
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  Speaker 1: moving around all the time and you're starting different schools
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  Speaker 1: and you can't make friends or you make friends, and
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  Speaker 1: then you got to leave them. So then you figure,
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  Speaker 1: what's the point of making new friends at the new place,
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  Speaker 1: because you're just gonna leave anyway. So that's going to
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  Speaker 1: eventually lead to a very withdrawn, quiet, brooding man. And
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  Speaker 1: I think you see that with Lee. And I think
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  Speaker 1: he only joined the Marines to just kind of get
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  Speaker 1: the hell away from his mother. And funny that all
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  Speaker 1: three brothers took the same route, you know, as their escape, definitely,
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  Speaker 1: and you know that they didn't come from a lot
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  Speaker 1: of money, so you know, they had a couple options.
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  Speaker 1: It was, you know, work a crappy job in New
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  Speaker 1: Orleans or Texas, or hey, join join the armed forces
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  Speaker 1: and try to make something to yourself and get away.
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  Speaker 1: And John Pike it worked for him, Robert Oswald worked
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  Speaker 1: for him. Lee Oswald not so much. And they do
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  Speaker 1: go into some of the unfortunate circumstances that happened and
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  Speaker 1: Lee was in the military and kind of what led
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  Speaker 1: to his uh dissatisfaction and things like that. So all
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  Speaker 1: in all, you know, given what this book is and
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  Speaker 1: not what it's trying to be, I mean, I don't
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  Speaker 1: think Robert Oswald comes across too heavily and you know,
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  Speaker 1: putting everything on Lee as he did in that interview.
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  Speaker 1: In the book, he does leave some lingering questions in
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  Speaker 1: the book, but he does explain himself in the book
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  Speaker 1: why he thinks the way that he does. But again,
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  Speaker 1: if you're if you're if you're looking to this book
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  Speaker 1: for any kind of research purposes for whatever reason, you're
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  Speaker 1: not going to find it there that type of book.
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  Speaker 1: What you will find are insights about what makes Lee
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  Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald from one of the closest
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  Speaker 1: people that knew him, and for that it's kind of valuable.
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  Speaker 1: So Joe, I'm going to give this a four guns
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  Speaker 1: up out of ten.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, you might be a little surprised at my
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  Speaker 2: score here because to what you just said, your point,
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  Speaker 2: it does have value, it does right, And of course,
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  Speaker 2: what we're all trying to do is figure out what's
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  Speaker 2: bullshit what is not. And there is a lot of
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  Speaker 2: information that you can't get from other people involved in
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  Speaker 2: Lee's early childhood life in this book. And I know
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  Speaker 2: for us specifically, when we were doing our James River
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  Speaker 2: Martin research for Lancer twenty three, we found a lot
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  Speaker 2: of usefulness in his description of the timeline during that
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  Speaker 2: week after Jack Ruby killed Lee, so there is a
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  Speaker 2: lot of value to it. There is, And of course
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  Speaker 2: I don't agree with the loan not conclusion he comes
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  Speaker 2: up with, and I think, like lesser Hope points out,
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  Speaker 2: struggles to find the motive like all of us do.
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  Speaker 2: But I'm going to give it a very solid six
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  Speaker 2: stars up for its unique value.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So, folks, if you want to read the book, like
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  Speaker 1: I said, we told you where to find it. I'll
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  Speaker 1: put the link to the internet archive down below. If
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  Speaker 1: you like a PDF copy, hit us up at the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Lone Guming Podcast at gmail dot com and we'll hook
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  Speaker 1: you up. And if you enjoyed this, make sure you're
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: checking out our full length show, an Investigation into the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: JFK Assassination that we do live here on YouTube every
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  Speaker 1: Friday night at seven pm Eastern and Wednesday night seven
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  Speaker 1: pm Eastern for our channel members. So check that out.
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  Speaker 1: We thank you so much for hanging with us. We
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And by the way, check out our last book review
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  Speaker 1: here and check out our podcast here. Until next time, peace,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you everyone,