In the summer of 1982, I read my first "Choose Your Own Adventure" book - and was instantly hooked on the idea of an adventure in which I was "the star!" The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series, alongside interactive fiction computer games ('Zork', and 'Planetfall', 'Sorcerer'), enthralled me and allowed me to feel like I was actually making consequential choices (my very own adventure!) beyond deciding to watch 'Star Blazers' and 'Battle of the Planets' after school.



In retrospect, these books we

In the summer of 1982, I read my first "Choose Your Own Adventure" book - and was instantly hooked on the idea of an adventure in which I was "the star!" The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series, alongside interactive fiction computer games ('Zork', and 'Planetfall', 'Sorcerer'), enthralled me and allowed me to feel like I was actually making consequential choices (my very own adventure!) beyond deciding to watch 'Star Blazers' and 'Battle of the Planets' after school.



In retrospect, these books were subtly tapped into the self-esteem movement. Marketed sometimes this way: "Allows young readers to make their own choices - building self-esteem!" What 8 year old didn't want to be the star of a novel! I wasn't sophisticated enough to understand, and looking back, this self-esteeem junk was what many wanted. But the books were legitimately cool in that the stakes were also high - you could die, and the illustrations would depict you (a kid) actually dead. I remember as a 10 or 11 year old, reading my first book (probably "The Cave of Time") - with anxiety as I made my choices, and then dying in the book kind of freaked me out.



This was a book written for kids - in which you (the main character) could the ultimate price when you lose. But you could also win, and as the series rolled along, I got the sense that some kids liked them because they liked to be the center of the story, and cheated constantly - saving their place and then flipping back if they saw the dreaded words "YOU LOSE" at the bottom of the page they had turned to.



'Lose Your Own Adventure: Who Killed John F. Kennedy' preserves all the things I loved about CYOA without the "building self-esteem" junk- which was bogus anyway. Because, here, you cannot win; and you always lose. You get to decide - will you die a painful death, suffer life-destroying humiliation by wedgie, or even worse: sell out and aid a conspiracy to enslave the world. Even if you make the 'right' choice - with integrity - that allows you to avoid dying, things only get more complicated, and you end up losing in a worse way. And you'll die laughing the entire time.



You can't win - but honestly? It's hard to learn from success. And if you've ever been remotely curious about the JFK assassination, but overwhelmed at the amount of reading material required, you will learn from your failures, as "Who Killed John F. Kennedy" perfectly distills it. But, rather than being a substitute for real knowledge, it's kind of a gateway/ primer for a deeper investigation. The book even includes a list of worthwhile books, made after the author painstakingly researched the whole topic.



But to be more specific about "LYOA" (mild spoiler alert)- it's hilarious, entertaining, and informative. Whether you subscribe to the idea that Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA, the Mafia, even UFO's - it's all in here in glorious detail. The only thing that's not entertained is the idea that he was killed solely by a shifty-eyed Marxist-Leninist Oswald; the lone gunman theory seems even more laughable than any gags in this book by the time you're done. One of my favorite plots involves the Altair Society: a group of (justifiably) jaded but highly informed "watchers" (which reminded me of the Talamasca in Anne Rice's "the Witching Hour" and the Lone Gunman technogeeks in the X-Files) who lay out the three main possibilities for you. Each agent in the Altair Society espouses a different theory- The Mafia, the CIA, or Area 51. You can decide which person gets to explain their theory -- and you then investigate that particular conspiracy thread. As a recovering conspiracy theorist, I was happy to see even the Freemasons get a huge nod. One of the places I laughed the hardest at was when you meet Arlen Specter, the author of the single-bullet theory, and when you harshly rebuke the single bullet theory, Specter uses magic powers as a Freemason to fire the magic bullet at you and your partner, which zig-zags through the air to kill you both. Another hilarious subplot is the fatal humiliation of a wedgie by school bully Slugs O'Toole.



"Lose Your Own Adventure" is a classic that retains what was great about the classic 80's books, while rightfully mocking the "YOU are the star!" tagline that tapped into suburban "self-esteem."