The Housewives Underground
The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The untold story of the women who debunked the Warren Report—a “captivating and impressively researched” (The New Yorker) history of obsession, heartbreak, and the myth of the great American century
“A ghostly past brought brimmingly, engrossingly to life . . . a social history of novelistic propulsion with fanatical documentation and a sympathetic understanding of what drives the driven.”—The New York Times
“Kaitlyn Tiffany masterfully unspools a hidden history of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath.”—Liza Mundy, New York Times bestselling author of Code Girls and The Sisterhood
In the winter of 1967, the official account of the Kennedy assassination was beginning to unravel. A scattered group of Americans had pointed to major problems with the report prepared by President Johnson’s handpicked Warren Commission. Many of the most serious criticisms of the government’s work came from a source that surprised some: women who, within the community of critics, outnumbered the men two to one.
Politicians and reporters dismissed these women, referring to them as “scavengers” and suggesting they were eccentrics with murder-mystery fixations or crushes on the deceased President Kennedy. But in The Housewives Underground, Kaitlyn Tiffany resurrects the story of Maggie Field, Shirley Martin, and Sylvia Meagher, whose collaboration and friendship reshaped both their own lives and our national memory. Field hosted screenings of the Zapruder film and raised money to pursue new leads. Martin traveled frequently to Dallas, enlisted her children to help interview witnesses, and irritated J. Edgar Hoover with her “antagonistic” attitude toward the FBI.
And at the center of the story is Sylvia Meagher—a born-and-raised New Yorker who was devoted to the ballet and the Mets, cultivated fierce friendships and firm grudges, and dedicated twenty-five years to her conviction that the whole truth of JFK’s assassination had not been told.
Painstakingly researched and engrossing, The Housewives Underground takes readers back to the turbulent 1960s and 1970s—a time when Americans’ belief in their government was eroding—introducing readers to the so-called housewives who asked the first, hardest questions about one of the most shocking events in American history.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Long before conspiracy theories became a permanent part of American life, a scattered network of women spent years questioning the official story of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. A sharp-edged United Nations employee in bohemian Greenwich Village, a small-town Oklahoma military wife and mother, and a wealthy Francophile Beverly Hills socialite built a nationwide information network through envelopes stuffed with notated newspaper clippings, expensive long-distance phone calls, and gutsy determination. Atlantic staff writer Kaitlyn Tiffany immerses us in the textures of mid-century American life, treating her dogged subjects with empathy and nuance as they pile their kids into family sedans for investigative field trips to Dealey Plaza and host salons discussing the infamous Zapruder footage. Rich with atmosphere and detail, The Housewives Underground is both a riveting historical investigation and a fascinating portrait of how Americans learned to be skeptical of official narratives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this superb history, Atlantic staff writer Tiffany (Everything I Need I Get from You) profiles a cadre of women who, skeptical of the Warren Commission, pursued dogged amateur investigations of the Kennedy assassination, raising questions that continue to be salient today. Tiffany particularly focuses on three women whose long-term contributions were most influential: Oklahoma housewife Shirley Martin, a passionate Kennedy supporter; New York–based World Health Organization analyst Sylvia Meagher, who felt distrustful of the government after having been dragged before a Loyalty Board during the Red Scare; and Beverly Hills housewife Maggie Field, who became obsessed with how illogical the chain of events was that culminated in Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination. The trio, Tiffany writes, approached their research with astonishing tenacity. Martin made frequent trips to Dallas, interviewing witnesses and becoming close with Oswald's mother—and getting surveilled by the FBI. Meagher combed through the Warren Commission's 18,000 pages of evidence, meticulously indexing "incongruities." Field collected and distributed evidence, including hosting an early screening of the Zapruder film and creating enlargements of a polaroid taken at "the instant of the fatal head shot." Tiffany paints an intimate portrait of the women's growing camaraderie, shared frustration with male fellow skeptics, and eventual discord over New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's shambolic conspiracy trial. It's an extraordinary account of a relentless search for truth.
