What's up, everybody?

Welcome to JFK Book Reviews, a division of the lung Gumen Podcast.

I'm your host Rob Clark, and along with me my co host Joe Borelli.

How you doing, Joe Good, Sir good good.

This week, folks, we're going to be talking about and says, neither of us have a physical copy.

We're going to do this bam.

The book Lee a portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by his brother Robert Oswald, and also Merrick and Barbara Land as co authors.

Now, Merrick Land is kind of a mystery suspense writer, you know, from the fifties and sixties.

I'm not sure about his wife, and I'm not sure why they're helping Robert Oswald write this book, but I guess they won.

I guess they won the lottery.

This book was published on January the first, nineteen sixty seven, by Coward McCann Publishing Company.

It clocks in at two hundred and forty six pages long and the only thing it includes is an index Joe and it is broken up into I believe three sections, and there's several chapters in each section.

It starts off, I think on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, and then it goes back to Lee's childhood and then the aftermath part.

You can find this book Joe on Amazon if you're willing to drop one hundred and ninety nine dollars.

At the time of this recording, there is one copy on there, and on eBay there's one on there for three hundred and eighty eight dollars.

Wow.

You can go to Internet archive and you can read it for free.

It is not downloadable, but if you're curious and you want to read it, you can.

It's free, or reach out to us at the Lonegoming Podcast at gmail dot com.

We do have PDF copies, which is how we read it to do this book review for gratis at no charge, So it's up if you want it.

And of course, given Robert Oswall's purview, this book does take a loan nut lean Joe.

It definitely does, as has Robert Oswalt for most of his life.

And so what was the author trying to achieve with this book?

And that's uh, that's not the easiest question to answer, because I think Robert the author struggled to humanize Lee and at the same time distance him from the person who Robert believed assassinated John F.

Kennedy.

So the book, like you mentioned, has a has a few different parts.

He definitely gets into the Oswaltz family, challenging circumstances in New Orleans.

Lee and Robert's father died very shortly before Lee Harvey Oswalt's birth in nineteen thirty nine, and he talks about how they were raised by their mother, Marguerite, and goes into family dysfunction, the lack of a stable family, And I think this is kind of where he's kind of making some excuses for Lee.

He depicts Lee's life as a series of attempts to escape his circumstances, from truancy to the Marines, to defection to the USSR, eventually, in his opinion, culminating in his infamous act allegedly of shooting the president.

You know, he talks a lot about Lee's troubled youth and how many times they moved and how many schools he was in by the time he dropped out, lack of stability.

He talks about how Lee was withdrawn yet temperamental, immersing himself in books and socialist literature by his teens.

But Rob I thought it would be interesting to hear from Robert Oswalt in his own words in video form, because this really paints a good picture.

Did he proclaim his innocence so out right?

Now?

Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill the president?

And if so, was he by himself?

Wow, that's right to degrade Simon.

Yes, he did, unfortunately by himself, by him Sale.

He conspiracy now conspiracy with Lee.

He made those decisions within him.

Sale.

And that's why it's so unbelievable to even consider without just absolute concrete evitage that he was part of a conspiracy.

He was not.

You've got a pattern there, and it's part of his pattern throughout his life.

He's looking for attention, always looking for attention that he never got it home.

Unfortunately, you believe if you look at the pattern, it becomes apparent.

Yes, where his life.

Was, If not the president, it was going to be somebody.

But Robert, if you're looking for attention, if you're crying out, you not only shoot the president and you say yeah, I did it, Yet you've either saw it live on television and saw the tape.

He didn I didn't shoot anybody, so I haven't been told what I Well, that's part of his nature, he was playing the mind game.

I don't think he would ever admit it.

He was going to be smarter than the rest of them.

So I think lesser Holt here, And it's funny how young he is brings up a really good question, and is what so many of us researchers on both sides have struggled to kind of figure out over the years, is what was the motive?

Right, he was a confessed communist sympathizer, so why would he kill maybe the most or one of the most liberal presidents to that time.

And according to everyone who we talked to or heard from, he didn't mind Kennedy.

So I give mister Holt a lot of credit for that question there.

But that kind of gives you the gist of what Robert Oswald felt.

So the writing style is very well written, it's very easy to read and follow along with.

And in terms of sources, as you briefly mentioned, it's not that type of book.

It's like JFK type of research book where it's going to list all these documents, although it does list some testimonies and things like that.

But yeah, I will go to you now, sir for your feelings and ratings.

On the book, Thank you, Joe.

Yeah, like you said, I think this book is a mixture of a biography and an autobiography, a biography of his brother and an autobiography of his experiences dealing with all this stuff and you know, being Lee Oswald's brother.

And I think a good part of this book is trying to make excuses for Lee's behavior, and it's going to great lengths trying to explain his early life, the dynamic with the mother, the absence of father figure except for one Edwin Ekdahl, who Lee was particularly fond of, but only lasted I think maybe two or three years.

And you know, Marguerite is kind of not all there unless she's getting her way.

And the Merit family, uh, you know, stepped in and helped them when they could.

The boys were sent to an orphang and orphanage at times, and just the supervision or or or love or care that that that you know kids need and normally get when they're in their childhood was pretty non existent with Lee.

And when you're moving around all the time and you're starting different schools and you can't make friends or you make friends, and then you got to leave them.

So then you figure, what's the point of making new friends at the new place, because you're just gonna leave anyway.

So that's going to eventually lead to a very withdrawn, quiet, brooding man.

And I think you see that with Lee.

And I think he only joined the Marines to just kind of get the hell away from his mother.

And funny that all three brothers took the same route, you know, as their escape, definitely, and you know that they didn't come from a lot of money, so you know, they had a couple options.

It was, you know, work a crappy job in New Orleans or Texas, or hey, join join the armed forces and try to make something to yourself and get away.

And John Pike it worked for him, Robert Oswald worked for him.

Lee Oswald not so much.

And they do go into some of the unfortunate circumstances that happened and Lee was in the military and kind of what led to his uh dissatisfaction and things like that.

So all in all, you know, given what this book is and not what it's trying to be, I mean, I don't think Robert Oswald comes across too heavily and you know, putting everything on Lee as he did in that interview.

In the book, he does leave some lingering questions in the book, but he does explain himself in the book why he thinks the way that he does.

But again, if you're if you're if you're looking to this book for any kind of research purposes for whatever reason, you're not going to find it there that type of book.

What you will find are insights about what makes Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald from one of the closest people that knew him, and for that it's kind of valuable.

So Joe, I'm going to give this a four guns up out of ten.

Okay, Okay, you might be a little surprised at my score here because to what you just said, your point, it does have value, it does right, And of course, what we're all trying to do is figure out what's bullshit what is not.

And there is a lot of information that you can't get from other people involved in Lee's early childhood life in this book.

And I know for us specifically, when we were doing our James River Martin research for Lancer twenty three, we found a lot of usefulness in his description of the timeline during that week after Jack Ruby killed Lee, so there is a lot of value to it.

There is, And of course I don't agree with the loan not conclusion he comes up with, and I think, like lesser Hope points out, struggles to find the motive like all of us do.

But I'm going to give it a very solid six stars up for its unique value.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So, folks, if you want to read the book, like I said, we told you where to find it.

I'll put the link to the internet archive down below.

If you like a PDF copy, hit us up at the Lone Guming Podcast at gmail dot com and we'll hook you up.

And if you enjoyed this, make sure you're checking out our full length show, an Investigation into the JFK Assassination that we do live here on YouTube every Friday night at seven pm Eastern and Wednesday night seven pm Eastern for our channel members.

So check that out.

We thank you so much for hanging with us.

We hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you next time.

And by the way, check out our last book review here and check out our podcast here.

Until next time, peace, Thank you everyone,