William Manchester

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William Raymond Manchester (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) was an American historian and biographer, notable as the bestselling author of 18 books that have been translated into 20 languages. ^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Controversy over the Kennedy book 3 Bibliography 4 Notes 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Manchester grew up in Attleboro, Massachusetts. His father served in the United States Marine Corps during World War I. After his father's death, and the attack on Pearl Harbor, William Manchester likewise enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, though he was ordered back to college until called up. Although he expected to serve in Europe, Manchester ultimately found himself in the Pacific. He served on Guadalcanal after the Japanese defeat there, and experienced combat in the last major battle of the Pacific War, on Okinawa, where he was severely wounded by an exploding rocket.

Manchester's wartime experiences formed the basis for his very personal account of the Pacific Theater, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War. He wrote of World War II in several other books, including his second of a planned three part biography of Winston Churchill and a biography of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

He received a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts in 1946 and a master's degree from the University of Missouri in 1947. He worked as a reporter for the Daily Oklahoman and The Baltimore Sun. He published his first book, a biography of H. L. Mencken based on his master's thesis, in 1951, then followed it up with a novel two years later.

In 1955 Manchester became an editor for Wesleyan University and spent the rest of his career there, later becoming an adjunct professor of history and writer-in-residence there.

His best-selling book, The Death of a President (1965) was a detailed account of the murder of Pres. John F. Kennedy, who was subject of an earlier book by Manchester. Manchester, who retraced Kenedy and Lee Harvey Oswald's movements before the assassination, concluded, based on his study of Oswald's psychology and their similar training as Marine sharpshooters, that Oswald acted alone. Manchester had the support of Robert and Jackie Kennedy, but later had a falling out with Robert Kennedy over Manchester's treatment of Pres. Lyndon Johnson. In his collection of essays Controversy (1977), Manchester detailed Kennedy (and, likely, Johnson's) attempts to suppress the book.

He remarked that the generation coming of age in the 1950s were "withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent,"^{[citation needed]} helping to cement the generational moniker Silent Generation.

Following the death of his wife in 1998, Manchester suffered two strokes. He announced, to the disappointment of many of his readers, that he would not be able to complete the previously planned third volume of his three part-biography of Churchill. According to this article Vol. III is likely to be published posthumously, being finished by writer Paul Reid, a former feature writer of The Palm Beach Post.

[edit] Controversy over the Kennedy book

Jacqueline Kennedy filed a lawsuit to prevent the publication of Manchester's The Death of a President, a work that she had previously authorized. The suit was settled in 1967, reportedly by Manchester agreeing to drop certain passages dealing with details of Kennedy's family life.^{[citation needed]} Satirist Paul Krassner published a piece at that time entitled "The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book", which imagined censored material of an outrageously more scandalous nature than anything that could possibly have been the case.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Bibliography

• Disturber of the Peace; the Life of H.L. Mencken (1951)
• The City of Anger, a novel. (1953)
• Shadow of the Monsoon (1956)
• A Rockefeller Family Portrait, from John D. to Nelson (1959)
• The Long Gainer, a novel (1961)
• Portrait of a President, John F. Kennedy in profile (1964)
• The Death of a President: November 20-November 25 (1967)
• The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War (1968)
• The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972 (1974)
• Controversy and other essays in journalism (1976)
• American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964 (1978)
• On Mencken, essays (1980)
• Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (1980)
• One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy (1983)
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874–1932 (1983)
• "Okinawa:The Bloodiest...", an essay. (1987)
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932–1940 (1988)
• In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum Photographers (1989)
• A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance — Portrait of an Age (1992) ISBN 0-316-54556-2
• Magellan (1994)
• No End Save Victory (2001)

[edit] Notes

1. ^ According to one writer, "Scholars generally disliked the biographies by Manchester. They were deemed superficial, anecdotal, hyperbolic, and hagiographic." Eugene L. Rasor, Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography. Greenwood Press. 2000, p. 62.

[edit] External links

• 1980 audio interview of William Manchester by Don Swaim