Trow, M. J. Dodging the Bullet. Failed Assassinations Throughout History

Everyone remembers where they were on the day John F. Kennedy died. The president's assassination shocked the world and raised questions that have yet to be answered. Assassination attempts are almost as shocking - the bullet that missed its target; the bomb that didn't go off; the poison that didn't work. "Dodging the Bullet" looks at the most spectacular of these attempts, from assassinations of royalty such as George II and Queen Victoria, where deranged men with unreliable weapons lurked in the bushes of parks, to the astonishing 634 attempts to kill and/or discredit Fidel Castro. Anyone in the public eye is a potential victim for an assassin. Anyone with access to the most easily obtainable weapons is a potential assassin. The fascination lies in the mixture of both - the chance meeting of celebrities and the mentally disturbed. "Dodging the Bullet" shows professional contract killers working for sinister organisations and governments. There are security services that are nothing of the sort. It's about arrogant and smug heads of state who believe in their own immortality - "Honey, I forgot to duck", as President Ronald Reagan said. Why the bullet missed is one of the imponderables. Another is: what difference would it have made if it hadn't?