The Presidency: Battle of the Book

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Pure Agony. Manchester noted that at least half of the people he interviewed "experienced moments of emotional difficulty" when asked to relive the assassination. Nor was he exempt. Months after Kennedy's funeral, Manchester recalled how "I still wake up at night and hear the stutter of the drums on Penn sylvania Avenue." An intense, emotional man, he became so immersed in his subject that he began referring to his wife Julia as "Jacqueline." As a result of the pressure, he became ill earlier this year, required hospitalization and received treatment from the same psychiatrist who tended Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda.

"It's been pure agony," said Manchester at one point, and the agony did not end when he turned his manuscript—pruned from 1,400 to 1,200 pages—over to Harper's Thomas at the turn of the year. Neither Bobby nor Jackie wanted to read it because, as a friend said, it would be "far too painful." But they farmed out copies to five close friends, most notably John Seigenthaler, an ex-Justice Department aide who is now editor of the Nashville Tennessean, and Edwin Guthman, a former aide of Bobby's who is now national news editor of the Los Angeles Times.

The two read the book mostly for factual accuracy. Among other things, they failed to grasp the full implications of its portrayal of Johnson—possibly because neither is a full-fledged L.B.J. fan. When they met with Editor Thomas in Washington in May, all three agreed that "Manchester had used bad judgment, even bad taste in places." They suggested a number of changes to the author—but not enough to balance the book's bias. For once, the Kennedys' early-warning system had failed.

Ancillary Deals. At this point, Manchester began to worry when—or whether—the book would be published. "I was told by Harper's representative," said Bobby, "that Manchester was becoming ill from an obsession with the thought that the book might never be published." Consequently, Bobby sent him a telegram in July saying that "members of the Kennedy family will place no obstacle in the way of publication." The Kennedys insist that the telegram "contained neither a waiver of any of the approval rights" nor an approval of the timing of publication.

But Manchester construed it as such, and went ahead with some ancillary deals. A copy of the text went to United Artists—despite the ban on movie sales. Without the Kennedys' O.K., rights for British publication were sold to London Publisher Michael Joseph for an unspecified sum and to the Book-of-the-Month Club in the U.S. Manchester's agent, Donald Congdon, sent 25 copies of the manuscript to six magazines—LIFE, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's and Good Housekeeping—for bids.