Rodger Remington

Biting the Elephant Rodger Remington

Somewhere along the course of my background reading for the style and format of this book, I came across an expression that caught my fancy as I considered the complexity of working with the writings of authors Gerald Posner, Arlen Specter, Kenneth Rahn, Max Holland, and Vincent Bugliosi. And somewhere else along that forgotten way I came across an expression I remember as being an African proverb: "We don't eat the elephant in one big bite; we eat the elephant bite by bite!" Indeed, I don't know whether I read that somewhere or whether I dreamed about something harmlessly apocryphal as a chant of the ants. What I do know is that several times over two years or so my mind has wandered in unsuccessful searches for format and title of a book based upon the writings of those prominent writers exploring the JFK assassination. Personally committed to writing targeted for future historians, I slowly came to realize my inability to write a single volume qualitative analysis of the major work of those prominent contributors to the literature of the John F. Kennedy assassination. So my first major decision was one of establishing a scope for this book. In the happening, I chose for major attention the work of Vincent Bugliosi, primarily because he himself had given considerable attention to key ideas developed by Posner, Specter, Rahn and Holland. Inasmuch as I had published in 2003 a book about Arlen Specter's Single-Bullet Theory, he was a logical choice for me to sidestep in this writing. As for Max Holland, I had long awaited the appearance of his book for which he had been awarded a prestigious prize as a work in progress in 2001. With considerable reluctance I abandoned his work from consideration in this venture of mine.