The Death of a President, William Manchester
The Death of a President, William Manchester
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The Death of a President
November 20–November 25, 1963

Author: William Manchester, Edith Sheffer

Narrator: Joe Barrett

Unabridged: 33 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/01/2013

Synopsis

As the world still reeled from the tragic and historic events of November 22, 1963, William Manchester set out, at the request of the Kennedy family, to create a detailed, authoritative record of President John F. Kennedy's death, including the days immediately preceding and following the assassination. Through hundreds of interviews, extensive travel, and firsthand observation, and with unique access to the proceedings of the Warren Commission, Manchester conducted an exhaustive historical investigation, accumulating forty-five volumes of documents, exhibits, and transcribed tapes. His ultimate objective—to set down as a whole the national and personal tragedy that was JFK's assassination—is brilliantly achieved in this galvanizing narrative, a book universally acclaimed as a landmark work of modern history.

About William Manchester

William Manchester (1922–2004) was an award-winning American author, biographer, historian, and a professor emeritus of history at Wesleyan University. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal and the Abraham Lincoln Literary Award. Among his many New York Times bestselling books are two which made the #1 spot on the list: The Death of a President and The Last Lion: Alone.

About Edith Sheffer

Edith Sheffer is a historian and senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of the prize-winning Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain.

About Joe Barrett

Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto . . . with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sean on November 21, 2021

In October 2009, Vanity Fair magazine published a cover story regarding Jackie Kennedy and her battle with writer William Manchester. After the assasination of her husband Jack Kennedy, rather than allow a maelstrom of books to appear, Jacqueline Kennedy along with Bobby Kennedy designated William M......more

Goodreads review by Caroline on March 24, 2011

As with most books I tend to read about the Kennedys, this one broke my heart. It's a long book, and since it only deals with the four days from the start of the Dallas trip on 21st November through to the state funeral on 25th November, the level of detail is exhaustive. It's not an intrusive or gh......more

Goodreads review by Christopher on April 13, 2024

William Manchester's The Death of a President was one of the earliest books written about the Kennedy Assassination. Journalist-historian Manchester (The Arms of Krupp, etc.) conducted a mind-boggling amount of firsthand research, logging hundreds of interviews, scanning Warren Commission files and......more

Goodreads review by Mark on August 24, 2016

I classify this historical account as my second summer read as when I think of President Kennedy I also think of Cape Cod. A few weeks ago our family arrived in Dallas, Texas to attend an extended family evening wedding. In the morning we visited a west end western apparel store where my younger son......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on February 03, 2012

In research for my work, I recently needed to obtain copies of the Look magazine issues that originally serialized this book. The articles about JFK's death made for fascinating reading, a true triumph of descriptive journalism. The details were telling and the depth truly astounding. It's this kind......more

Quotes

“A work of considerable fascination…it is startlingly evocative.” Thomas Mallon, New York Times bestselling author

“William Manchester is a gifted and conscientious writer.” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author

“It tells you what happened, and it tells you how it felt while it was happening.” Jerzy Kozinski, National Book Award–winning author

“An extraordinarily impressive, fascinating, and absorbing piece of work.” New York Times

“An authoritative, powerful account of the Dallas tragedy.” Time

“It seems not at all inconceivable that we have here an American contribution to the great literature on the death of kings.” New Yorker

“A work of love, even passion…Mr. Manchester’s final telling of the death of Kennedy is most moving.” Gore Vidal

“This is a great piece of writing.” Bill Paxton

“The book is astounding in its revelations, not only of affairs of state at the highest levels of power but also in its unique x-raying of a national disaster pursued by the author to its tiniest and ultimate reverberation. In this reviewer’s experience there has never before been a book like this.” Saturday Review

“Mr. Manchester matches the dislocation and identification which almost everyone experienced during the tragic events of that long weekend. Inescapably.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • #1 New York Times bestseller
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