Gage determined the most accurate work on the subject is Peter Savodnik's , The Interloper.  Savodnik did research on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union.  The author says all we need to know about the assassination is found in this short period in Oswald's tragic life.  Oswald is portrayed as a tragic figure coming out of a dysfunctional home sadly seeking to make something out of a series of failures to win approval.  John Claypol, a famous Baptist pastor in Fort Worth, once wrote about meeting Lee Harvey's mother.  His impression was that of a troubled woman who seemed to find fault and discomfort in each episode of her existence.  He concluded as Savodnik, that this home life helped explain Oswald's quest to be important.

Oliver  Stone's fabrication of vast conspiracies helped lay a ground work for Religious Right ideologies.  Without Oswald would we have Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series?  Tim gave us a vast network of volumes of novels filled with secret plots and government cover-ups by insiders who control the nation.  Jon Hagee's conspiracy theories find legitimacy in the folklore of Dispensationist  predictions.  Did we not realize there is a vast cover up by secret cartels who devise plans to plant chips in all of us and we are not even aware?  From Religious Right views on public education to the Federal Reserve, we have woven into the fabric secret plots.  I recall hearing local Christian Coalition activists lamenting the fact that standardized secret test in public schools were given to their children to brainwash students.

Visit a few end of times prophets and in just a few clicks you get entangled in John Birch Society-type theories about the world.  Which might help explain the affection the Religious Right has had with the Birchers as Russ Bellant has written about.

Time Magazine's David Talbot says he has found 32 reasons for concluding there was no conspiracy.  He found 53 pieces of evidence that point to Oswald's guilt.  When historians bring up facts refuting David Barton's conclusions, they seem to be falling on infertile ground.   Barton's groupies,  instead of listening to the arguments, are awaiting a chance to propose the latest reasons for their revisionism.    It takes great efforts to dispute a conspiracy, but little if any to come up with one.  You conjure up a theory and then set out to prove the thesis.  Which is what the Anti-Defamation claims Barton does.

Our culture appears to be more inclined to believe in secret plots than historical research.  Beverly Gage ended her article with these words: "But the anxieties and paranoia at the heart of the vast Kennedy literature--both the fear of high-level deception and the longing for transformative leadership--are unlikely to disappear anytime soon."  The modern age of readily available information allows us access to more and more information. Unfortunately, some of that information is not accurate.