Reluctant to read "Death of a President"

[Humphrey Maltravers]

I have always been reluctant to read "Death of a President," because I
felt Mr. Manchester was much too close in time, and too emotionally
involved to be objective.

Admittedly, I have read extended fragments from "Death of a
President," and came away with a great deal of admiration for Mr.
Manchester's lyrical prose-style.

[James K. Olmstead]

"Humphrey Maltravers" <hmalt...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f1b093f6-da32-4682...@n22g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...

When I returned from Viet Nam in 1969, my dad handed me a copy of "Death of
a President" and said
"Now there's a film script". I had just spent 2 years making films for the
4th Inf Div and wanted to do
films when I established "November Studios". ( named for November 1963).

The inside jacket timeline was my storyboard to outline production.
Manchester's work is worthy of study....his notes would be
a great insight, if they ever get released. "DodP" and "The Oswald Affair"
two very early books, that should be read together.

I still those first two assassination books, my third was Lifton's BE

jko

[Dave Reitzes]

Manchester's book was highly controversial at the time it appeared, due to
Mrs. Kennedy's largely unsuccessful attempts to censor it. Manchester
conducted a tremendous amount of research for the book, and, while he made
some mistakes (who doesn't?), I would recommend it to anyone interested in
the assassination.

Dave

[markusp]

In Manchester's DOAP, he is really not kind to Lyndon Johnson. A few
carefully phrased sentences toward the end of the book essentially
implicate Johnson. He was able to network and secure interviews w/
witnesses even before any WC staff were able to get.

~Mark

[Sandy McCroskey]

The idea that Johnson was behind the assassination is one of the
all-time zaniest conspiracy theories.

I doubt if anybody who holds such a notion has spent any time with
Robert Caro's mammoth (and still uncompleted) biography of Johnson and
tried to get a real sense of this complicated man. (The latest volume,
"The Passage of Power," includes an account of the assassination from
Johnson's point of view.) A review in today's New York Times concludes
on a note that should be instructive to those who would demonize LBJ:

<quote on>

Commentators who have questioned the sincerity of Johnson?s commitment
to civil rights, Mr. Caro says, do not understand how deeply he
identified with ?the dispossessed of the earth.? He had worked on a road
gang as a kid in the isolated Texas Hill Country and had known the
humiliation of his father?s failure (a drought and fall in the cotton
market left Sam Johnson, who had been a member of the Texas House of
Representatives, in debt and a figure of local ridicule). Those
experiences would shape Lyndon Johnson?s ferocious determination to win
?the passage of long-dreamed-of liberal legislation whose purposes,? in
Mr. Caro?s view, ?went far beyond any embodied in Kennedy legislation.?

</quote off>

/sandy

[Ramon F. Herrera]

On Apr 29, 9:56 pm, Dave Reitzes <dreit...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Apr 28, 8:06 pm, Humphrey Maltravers <hmaltrav...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have always been reluctant to read "Death of a President," because I
> > felt Mr. Manchester was much too close in time, and too emotionally
> > involved to be objective.
>
> > Admittedly, I have read extended fragments from "Death of a
> > President," and came away with a great deal of admiration for Mr.
> > Manchester's lyrical prose-style.
>

> Manchester's book was highly controversial at the time it appeared,
> due to Mrs. Kennedy's largely unsuccessful attempts to censor it.

"[The Death of a President] offers a compelling account of President
John F. Kennedy's last six days--the only record authorized by the
Kennedy family"

http://tinyurl.com/84pftg5

-Ramon

[Anthony Marsh]

On 4/30/2012 7:40 PM, Sandy McCroskey wrote:
> markusp wrote:
>> On Saturday, April 28, 2012 7:06:09 PM UTC-5, Humphrey Maltravers wrote:
>>> I have always been reluctant to read "Death of a President," because I
>>> felt Mr. Manchester was much too close in time, and too emotionally
>>> involved to be objective.
>>>
>>> Admittedly, I have read extended fragments from "Death of a
>>> President," and came away with a great deal of admiration for Mr.
>>> Manchester's lyrical prose-style.
>>
>> In Manchester's DOAP, he is really not kind to Lyndon Johnson. A few
>> carefully phrased sentences toward the end of the book essentially
>> implicate Johnson. He was able to network and secure interviews w/
>> witnesses even before any WC staff were able to get.
>>
>> ~Mark
>>
>
> The idea that Johnson was behind the assassination is one of the
> all-time zaniest conspiracy theories.
>
> I doubt if anybody who holds such a notion has spent any time with
> Robert Caro's mammoth (and still uncompleted) biography of Johnson and
> tried to get a real sense of this complicated man. (The latest volume,
> "The Passage of Power," includes an account of the assassination from
> Johnson's point of view.) A review in today's New York Times concludes
> on a note that should be instructive to those who would demonize LBJ:
>

I am not going to rely on Caro's propaganda.
I look to what LBJ actually did and said. His real life experience.

In 1927, Johnson taught mostly Mexican children at the Welhausen School
in Cotulla, some ninety miles south of San Antonio in La Salle County.
In 1930, he taught in Pearsall High School in Pearsall, Texas, and
afterwards took a position as teacher of public speaking at Sam Houston
High School in Houston.[11] When he returned to San Marcos in 1965,
after having signed the Higher Education Act of 1965, Johnson looked back:

"I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that
little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of
realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every
one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was
then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the
door to knowledge remained closed to any American."[12]

His program known as the Great Society was designed to expand on FDR's
Fair Deal and lift whole segments of the population out of poverty.

[Bill Clarke]

In article <4f9f...@mcadams.posc.mu.edu>, Sandy McCroskey says...

Thank you. I've been saying this for a good while but the Camelot/CT
crowd will have none of it. One told me, "Caro wasn't god on LBJ"!
Another said if the new volume didn't include Madeline Brown and Billy Sol
Estes it would be incomplete!

Better they question the sincerity of Kennedy's commitment to civil rights
but that will never happen.

I have my copy pre-ordered for a May delivery but no word from Amazon yet.

Bill Clarke

[Sandy McCroskey]

On 4/30/12 10:49 PM, Anthony Marsh wrote:
> On 4/30/2012 7:40 PM, Sandy McCroskey wrote:
>> markusp wrote:
>>> On Saturday, April 28, 2012 7:06:09 PM UTC-5, Humphrey Maltravers wrote:
>>>> I have always been reluctant to read "Death of a President," because I
>>>> felt Mr. Manchester was much too close in time, and too emotionally
>>>> involved to be objective.
>>>>
>>>> Admittedly, I have read extended fragments from "Death of a
>>>> President," and came away with a great deal of admiration for Mr.
>>>> Manchester's lyrical prose-style.
>>>
>>> In Manchester's DOAP, he is really not kind to Lyndon Johnson. A few
>>> carefully phrased sentences toward the end of the book essentially
>>> implicate Johnson. He was able to network and secure interviews w/
>>> witnesses even before any WC staff were able to get.
>>>
>>> ~Mark
>>>
>>
>> The idea that Johnson was behind the assassination is one of the
>> all-time zaniest conspiracy theories.
>>
>> I doubt if anybody who holds such a notion has spent any time with
>> Robert Caro's mammoth (and still uncompleted) biography of Johnson and
>> tried to get a real sense of this complicated man. (The latest volume,
>> "The Passage of Power," includes an account of the assassination from
>> Johnson's point of view.) A review in today's New York Times concludes
>> on a note that should be instructive to those who would demonize LBJ:
>>
>
> I am not going to rely on Caro's propaganda.

Robert Caro's "propaganda"? That's rich.
He's an excellent biographer, an exemplary professional, who, by all
accounts, portrays Johnson warts and all.
But this is the funny thing about your post (like so many of them). Your
story, below, reinforces the point the review highlighted from Caro's
book. You're not disagreeing with that point. Yet you have to come up
with some sort of disagreeable comment or... well, you just wouldn't be you.

By the way, the footnotes [numbered] in your post indicate that you
copied the passage from a source that you have failed to cite.

/sm

[HistorianDetective]

On Apr 30, 4:25 pm, markusp <markina...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, April 28, 2012 7:06:09 PM UTC-5, Humphrey Maltravers wrote:
> > I have always been reluctant to read "Death of a President," because I
> > felt Mr. Manchester was much too close in time, and too emotionally
> > involved to be objective.
>
> > Admittedly, I have read extended fragments from "Death of a
> > President," and came away with a great deal of admiration for Mr.
> > Manchester's lyrical prose-style.
>

RE:

> In Manchester's DOAP, he is really not kind to Lyndon Johnson. A few
> carefully phrased sentences toward the end of the book essentially
> implicate Johnson. He was able to network and secure interviews w/
> witnesses even before any WC staff were able to get.
>
> ~Mark

Exactly what were those "few carefully phrased sentences toward the
end of the book"
that "essentially implicate Johnson" ?

A page number and paragraph would suffice just as well.

JM/HD

[Anthony Marsh]

In fact many people think that Manchester suspected that LBJ was the
mastermind.

[Anthony Marsh]

As I said, I don't rely on Caro. I cite what LBJ actually did and said.

> By the way, the footnotes [numbered] in your post indicate that you
> copied the passage from a source that you have failed to cite.
>

Most Internet newbies can recognize a cut and past from Wikipedia by the
numbers in the brackets.

> /sm

[Bill Clarke]

In article <4f9f51d8$1...@mcadams.posc.mu.edu>, Sandy McCroskey says...

I thought so too. Caro is on record as not liking LBJ so what he writes could
hardly be considered propaganda. His work concerning LBJ is certainly a warts
and all account. A very good account.

Bill Clarke

[Sandy McCroskey]

Many people think that Manchester was an idiot?
/sm

[Sandy McCroskey]

You said you don't "rely on Caro's propaganda." Rather a different
statement.
Caro is an excellent source for what LBJ actually did and said.

>> By the way, the footnotes [numbered] in your post indicate that you
>> copied the passage from a source that you have failed to cite.
>>
>
> Most Internet newbies can recognize a cut and past from Wikipedia by the
> numbers in the brackets.
>
>> /sm
>
>

Other sources also use bracketed footnotes.
It's only proper to cite one's sources.
Just saying.
/sm

[Bill Clarke]

In article <4f9f6b27$1...@mcadams.posc.mu.edu>, Anthony Marsh says...

I wasn't impressed with Manchester's crap. Was you?

Bill Clarke

[Anthony Marsh]

Nope. I never suspected LBJ either.

> Bill Clarke
>
>

[Anthony Marsh]

You did not quote Caro pointing out what Wikipedia cited. Maybe you
chose the wrong section to quote.

>>> By the way, the footnotes [numbered] in your post indicate that you
>>> copied the passage from a source that you have failed to cite.
>>>
>>
>> Most Internet newbies can recognize a cut and past from Wikipedia by the
>> numbers in the brackets.
>>
>>> /sm
>>
>>
>
>
> Other sources also use bracketed footnotes.
> It's only proper to cite one's sources.
> Just saying.
> /sm
>

Just saying again that most newbies are able to figure out that the
quote came from Wikipedia. Maybe you don't know what Wikipedia is and
don't know how to use a search engine.

[Sandy McCroskey]

I quoted the NY Times review, if you will recall.

>>>> By the way, the footnotes [numbered] in your post indicate that you
>>>> copied the passage from a source that you have failed to cite.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Most Internet newbies can recognize a cut and past from Wikipedia by the
>>> numbers in the brackets.
>>>
>>>> /sm
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Other sources also use bracketed footnotes.
>> It's only proper to cite one's sources.
>> Just saying.
>> /sm
>>
>
>
> Just saying again that most newbies are able to figure out that the
> quote came from Wikipedia. Maybe you don't know what Wikipedia is and
> don't know how to use a search engine.
>
>

I've cited Wikipedia quite often myself here.
If you will recall...

Of course, I could have Googled the precise wording and figured it out.
But not citing gives the impression that you're trying to pass off
somebody else's work as your own.

I guess this indicates one reason you will never present your own unique
theory in any more demanding form than newsgroup posts.

/sandy