"American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and
breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary
historical event -- the attempted assassination of President
Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and
the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C.,
that saved the president's life. Written by Pulitzer
Prize-winner Stephen Hunter, the widely admired and
bestselling novelist and author of such books as Havana, Hot
Springs, and Dirty White Boys, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an
experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at
once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research
and the vivid and dramatically told story of an act of
terrorism that almost succeeded. They have pieced together,
at last, the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the
president and how a few good men -- ordinary guys who were
willing to risk their lives in the line of duty -- stopped
it. It is a book about courage -- on both sides -- and about
what politics and devotion to a cause can lead men to do,
and about what actually happens, second by second, when a
gunfight explodes. It begins on November 1, 1950, an
unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00
P.M. in his temporary residence at Blair House, the
president of the United States takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M.,
two men approach Blair House from different directions.
Oscar Collazo, a respected metal polisher and family man,
and Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman, don't look
dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their
calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited
approach. What the three White House policemen and one
Secret Service agent cannot guess is that under each man's
coat is a 9mm German automatic pistol and in each head, a
dream of assassin's glory. At point-blank range, Collazo and
then Torresola draw and fire and move toward the president
of the United States. Hunter and Bainbridge tell the story
of that November day with narrative power and careful
attention to detail. They are the first to report on the
inner workings of this conspiracy; they examine the forces
that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors
also tell the story of the men themselves, from their youth
and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved
and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted. Their
telling commemorates heroism -- the quiet commitment to duty
that in some moments of crisis sees some people through an
ordeal, even at the expense of their lives. "
© 2003-2025 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy