The Death of a President

The noted author and historian wrote this groundbreaking work in 1967, detailing the final six days of John F. Kennedy's life. It was the only book on the subject authorized by the Kennedy family, and it provides intimate details of Kennedy's final hours. Joe Barrett's gravelly voice gives the book a comfortable feel, and he mixes in some character voices that make the work authentic. Barrett moves through the copious details, reading slowly enough that we can comprehend the facts but also allowing us time to process the gravity of what we're hearing. In some passages Barrett drops the ends of his sentences, but this book deserves a wide audience both for its writing and Barrett's narration. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

November 18, 2013
The fall of a near-mythic leader is elegized in this sprawling, magisterial account of the killing of President John F. Kennedy, reissued for the assassination's 50th anniversary. Historian Manchester (The Last Lion) follows the Warren Commission in fingering Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman, but demotes him from anti-hero to contemptible bit player in the drama. The author instead recounts the demise and transfiguration of Camelot by spotlighting its central figures: Kennedy, a dazzling character martyred in an instant; Lyndon Johnson, vaulting from frustrated impotence to untrammeled power, guilefully maneuvering to consolidate his rule from the moment of Kennedy's death; Jackie Kennedy, self-possessed though stained with her husband's blood, leveraging her moral authority and instinct for pageantry to transform Kennedy glamor into tragic pathos. Manchester's fantastically detailed but engrossing narrative is Shakespearian in its sweep, taking in court intrigues played out through photo-ops and turf-battles over Air Force One, comic turns by publicity hounds, and eruptions of griefâand celebration!âfrom the great and the humble. Published in 1967, Manchester's portrait of J.F.K. is innocent of the tawdrier revelations of later Kennedy scholarship and can seem naive in its adulation, but he delivers a superb, riveting evocation of the assassination's impact on the national psyche.