LEAD FELL LIKE A SHOWER AT ELEVEN MILES PER HOUR: Vanity Fair has a terrific piece on the commissioning, writing, and publication of William Manchester's Death of a President, the Kennedy Family-sanctioned history of the events of November 22-25 1963. This may well have been the first grown-up history I ever read. And William Manchester remains one of my favorite historians.
The Kennedy family understood that a book about the assassination would be in the works immediately and chose Mr Manchester in order to both beat others to the punch, but also to be sure that they could give their comments for posterity and be done with it. The sort of access was incredible -- ten hours of interviews with Mrs. Kennedy in the spring of 1964 and no one, save President Johnson (who answered in writing) and Marina Oswald refused to be interviewed -- but also a testament to the Kennedy's family's sense of history and public grace that they did.
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