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Twenty-Six Seconds

A Personal History of the Zapruder Film

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Twenty-Six Seconds

Written by: Alexandra Zapruder
Narrated by: Alexandra Zapruder
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About this listen

The moving, untold family story behind Abraham Zapruder's film footage of the Kennedy assassination and its lasting impact on our world.

Abraham Zapruder didn't know when he ran home to grab his video camera on November 22, 1963 that this single spontaneous decision would change his family's life for generations to come. Originally intended as a home movie of President Kennedy's motorcade, Zapruder's film of the JFK assassination is now shown in every American history class, included in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit questions, and referenced in novels and films. It is the most famous example of citizen journalism, a precursor to the iconic images of our time, such as the Challenger explosion, the Rodney King beating, and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. But few know the complicated legacy of the film itself.

Now Abraham's granddaughter, Alexandra Zapruder, is ready to tell the complete story for the first time. With the help of the Zapruder family's exclusive records, memories, and documents, Zapruder tracks the film's torturous journey through history, all while American society undergoes its own transformation, and a new media-driven consumer culture challenges traditional ideas of privacy, ownership, journalism, and knowledge. Part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder demonstrates how one man's unwitting moment in the spotlight shifted the way politics, culture, and media intersect, bringing about the larger social questions that define our age.

©2016 Alexandra Zapruder (P)2016 Hachette Audio
Americas Biographies & Memoirs
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Nothing too shocking revealed

This was clearly an extraordinarily well-researched and well-assembled history of the Zapruder film, however by the time I neared the end, I realized that what I was actually listening to was a member of a family defending their family's honour. Which is fair enough, and which may be a crucial background to consider the history of the Zapruder film against. Apart from a daughter and granddaughter walking us though why she believes the actions and motivations of her antecedents were righteous, she also visits the ongoing conflict that Americans have with censorship and capitalism. Both are key to every aspect of this story, though she uses neither word frequently, or at all. At the end of the day, Abraham Zapruder placed himself in the position to both censor and profit from the very existence of the film, and the next 5 decades have seen his descendants grapple with those facts, in some cases denying them outright, in others trying to contextualize them in a way that fits the narrative of their family as they see it. Joining Zapruder on her journey of doing this- cognizantly or not- while also following the history of the film was thought provoking to say the least. Worth a listen.

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