The Death of a President: November 20–November 25, 1963 is historian William Manchester's 1967 account of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. The book gained public attention before it was published when Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, who had initially asked Manchester to write the book, demanded that the author make changes in the manuscript.
Description
The book is dedicated: "For all in whose hearts he still lives—a watchman of honor who never sleeps".
The book chronicles several days in late November 1963, from a small reception the Kennedys hosted in the White House on Wednesday, November 20, the evening before the visit to Dallas, Texas, through the flight to Texas, the motorcade, the assassination, the hospital, the airplane journey back to Washington, D.C., and the funeral on Monday, November 25. The tension between the Kennedy and Johnson factions, the worldwide reaction, and Lee Harvey Oswald's televised murder by Jack Ruby are discussed in painstaking detail.
Background
Genesis
During early 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy commissioned Manchester to produce an account of the assassination. She and the Kennedy family wanted a definitive telling of the events to preempt other books, including Jim Bishop's forthcoming The Day Kennedy Was Shot. Kennedy was familiar with Manchester's work through Portrait of a President: John F. Kennedy in Profile, his account of the president's first year and a half as president. Manchester had met and grown to admire John Kennedy when both were recovering from war wounds in Boston.
The agreement stipulated that Jacqueline Kennedy and the president's brother Robert F. Kennedy, then Attorney General, would approve the manuscript. As part of the agreement, Manchester was to receive an advance of $36,000 but only against the income from the first printing. All other earnings would go to the John F. Kennedy Library.
See also
- The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book hoax by Paul Krassner