Stanley Marks--considered to be one of the most prescient, visionary researchers on the JFK assassination-described this work as "A nonfiction manual for the American of common sense, the agents of the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, the ABC, CBS, and NBC commentators, and newspaper columnists, interested in learning the deceit, deception, and duplicity practiced by the upholders of 'basic principles of justice, ' the 'Warren Commission.'" Back in print now for the first time since 1969, it also includes commentaries on "the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans, Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, and Earl Ray in Memphis." While Marks' first book on the assassination, Murder Most Foul!, remains his most seminal work as well the most avant-garde in terms of stylistic approach, its format of over nine-hundred rapidly changing "questions and answers" can be a bit jarring. Although all of his books on the assassination contain fascinating, insightful observations, some consider Two Days of Infamy to be his most well-written work on the subject, due largely to its smooth narrative flow and literary presentation. The text expands upon many of the points first raised a year and a half earlier in Murder Most Foul!, as well as introducing fresh ideas and perspectives to the case. In this March 1969 text he was already using the term "conspirators" when referring to the assassins of JFK, RFK, and MLK, and he states unequivocally: "All three were murdered as the end result of three interrelated conspiracies," adding: "History has shown that an invisible coup d'état occurred when President Kennedy was murdered." In 1972, after the author Joachim Joesten learned of Stanley's work, he credited him with being one of the first American researchers who dared to use the word "coup" in this context: "To my knowledge, nobody but Jim Garrison and an obscure West Coast writer named Stanley J. Marks has ever endorsed before my unswerving contention that the murder of John F. Kennedy was nothing short of a camouflaged coup d'état." The renowned JFK scholar James DiEugenio recently referred to Marks as a "forgotten hero" and "buried gem." So much of where we are today is foreshadowed in the writing of Stan Marks: in particular, the fueling of racism and xenophobia, the attempted erosion of civil rights, and the empowerment of the oligarchy and its principal tool of control, the police state. Speaking directly to the readers of a future generation, in Two Days, he writes: "The balance of this small volume now attempts to enter the "dark world" that is slowly, oh, so slowly, being lit, although full light may take until the year 2038-if the "basic principles of American justice" have the strength to remain as principles guiding this long-suffering nation."
A fearless author who was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Stanley J. Marks was one of the first American researchers to draw a direct connection between the murders of JFK, MLK, and RFK. He published nineteen books on politics and religion, one of which received accolades from Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Marcuse. His first book, a bestseller titled The Bear that Walks Like a Man: A Diplomatic and Military Analysis of Soviet Russia (1943), was reviewed in over thirty mainstream newspapers and received glowing praise from John Cudahy, President Roosevelt's former ambassador to Poland and Belgium. While Marks was researching his book on Russia he received assistance from Secretary of State Cordell Hull, "the father of the United Nations," who gave Marks direct access to State Department files. In 1973, the JFK Library contacted Marks with a request to purchase Murder Most Foul! for their collection. And in 1979, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on Assassinations cited five of Marks' assassination-related titles (including Murder Most Foul! and Two Days of Infamy) in its report.
Rob Couteau's work as a literary critic, interviewer, and social commentator has been featured in books such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by Thomas Fahy, Conversations with Ray Bradbury edited by Steven Aggelis, Ghetto Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Tyrone Simpson, and David Cohen's Forgotten Millions, a book about the homeless mentally ill. His published interviews include conversations with Ray Bradbury, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Justin Kaplan, Last Exit to Brooklyn novelist Hubert Selby, Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda, LSD discoverer Dr. Albert Hofmann, Picasso's model and muse Sylvette David, Nabokov biographer Robert Roper, music producer Danny Goldberg, poet and publisher Ed Foster, and historian Philip Willan, author Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy. In his early years as a writer, Couteau won the North American Essay Award, a competition sponsored by the American Humanist Association. His books, including the novel Doctor Pluss, the anthology More Collected Couteau, and the poetry collection The Sleeping Mermaid, have been praised in the Midwest Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and Evergreen Review. His essays and interviews on the Sixties assassinations have been featured at the Kennedys and King website, and he has appeared several times as a guest on Len Osanic's Black Op Radio.
