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One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy
One Brief Shining Moment Remembering Kennedy Author:William Manchester Jacket flap: — John Kennedy and William Manchester first met in Boston in 1946. Young New England vets, they were both still recovering from crippling wounds suffered in the Pacific, where they both had been in fierce combat. While their careers would diverge, the friendship and respect that had spontaneously developed when they first met, grew a... more »nd deepened over the years.
Knowing Manchester, confident of his discretion, and certain that he not only did not want but would never accept a government position, President Kennedy was extraordinarily candid in their conversations. JFK encouraged Manchester to expand a series of magazine articles into the book PORTRAIT OF A PRESIDENT. Because of that work, JFK's widow and his brother Bobby selected Manchester to write the authorized history of the assassination, THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT. Research for that book gave Manchester extensive and frequently elusive access to the President's family, friends, and aides.
Manchester writes that while JFK's death was a tragedy, his life was a triumph, and ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT is a celebration of that triumph. Culling incidents from a friendship that spanned almost two decades, Manchester recalls boisterous family gatherings at Hyannis Port, grueling campaign trips, and quiet evenings alone with the President in the White House family quarters. The resulting book provides us with myriad anecdotes and insights into a life that bristled with vigor, competitiveness, and an unflagging drive for excellence; a life that shone with elegance, intelligence, and compassion.
Manchester's knowledge of the Kennedys extend from JFK's plans for total withdrawal from Vietnam by 1965 to the secret - but rarely honored - family rules for touch football, and how and why the media mistakenly believed JFK called his son John-John. It covers Kennedy's solemn pledge to black leaders that he would press for civil rights legislation, unprecedented since Lincoln's presidency, whatever the political consequences; the struggle between his all-absorbing career and his devotion for Jackie; and details of his two other special relationships: with his father and his brother Bobby.
Lavishly illustrated with 16 pages of color and more than 180 black-and-white photographs, ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT is a unique tribute to an extraordinary man and leader, written, as it could have been, by a friend and colleague.
William Manchester is Adjunct Professor of History and Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan University. His fifteen books have been translated into eighteen languages and Braille.« less