Nation: THE MANCHESTER BOOK: Despite Flaws & Errors, a Story That Is Larger Then Life or Death

(5 of 6)

The Kennedys and their friends are generally courageous, strong and tasteful. The Secret Service, Marguerite and Marina Oswald, the undertaking profession and nearly all Texans are cast in black (or at least dark grey) hats. Manchester paints a miasmic portrait of Dallas, writing that the city suffered from a "disease of the spirit." He even describes the city's skyline as "phallic." Texans, he writes, disliked Kennedy because he "refused to give the world a kick in the old kazzazza," and because his "Weltansicht was entirely lacking in yippee." This typifies not only the summary judgments but the book's stylistic atrocities.

The book's major flaw may well turn out to be its very essence: Manchester's swift-moving dramatization of his own research. Throughout the book, he has used the "omniscient author" technique of the novelist, confidently relating the inner thoughts of nearly everyone in his immense cast of characters. Manchester says he "quotes" thoughts only when people later told him what in fact went through their minds, but this is still a risky technique in a book that deals with an enormously complex historical event and with historical figures who are still alive and extremely sensitive.

His insistence on working without a researcher even to double-check name spellings was also perilous. Already, Manchester is being accused of errors. No sooner had the first reviews appeared last week than the Pentagon retorted that Manchester was wrong in saying Defense Secretary McNamara had declared a "red alert" for all U.S. military commands when he learned Kennedy was dead. Manchester claims he has a copy of McNamara's order. The Defense Department also charged he erred in saying that, as Vice President, Lyndon Johnson had never been briefed about the "football"—the 30-lb., black metal suitcase containing codes to launch a nuclear attack. Manchester says his information came from five different sources, including then J.C.S. Chairman Maxwell Taylor.

Honest & Herculean Despite Manchester's painstaking description of the Bible on which L.B.J. took the presidential oath aboard Air Force One ("tooled leather" cover and inside "the tiny sewn-on black initials 'JFK' "), some of those who were there claim it was a Catholic missal still wrapped in cellophane. At one point in his reporting, Manchester phoned a White House correspondent, who had been a member of the press pool aboard the flight from Dallas to Washington, and asked him about some small point not related to the flight. The correspondent reminded Manchester that he had been on the plane, but the author coolly replied that the manifest did not list the newsman as having been aboard and hung up the phone.