FIRST EDITION OF MANCHESTER’S DEATH OF A PRESIDENT, INSCRIBED BY HIM TO SUPREME COURT JUSTICE BYRON WHITE

MANCHESTER, William. The Death of a President. New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, (1967). Octavo, original blue cloth, chronology endpapers, original dust jacket. $4500.

First edition of the distinguished biographer’s account of President Kennedy’s assassination and its immediate aftermath, inscribed by him on the half title three weeks before publication to Supreme Court Justice Byron White, who served as Deputy Attorney General under Kennedy until Kennedy appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1962, "To Mr. Justice White—with gratitude and admiration—Wm. Manchester. 17 III 67."

Manchester "used his novelist's eye to fashion meticulously researched portraits of power, among them Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill and, perhaps most famously, John F. Kennedy… It was his entree to the Kennedy family in the 'age of Camelot' and, ultimately, the tragic end to Kennedy's term of office that brought Manchester his greatest visibility… [The Death of a President] became a best seller and later was given the Dag Hammarskjold International Literary Prize" (New York Times). With "First Edition" on copyright page. Advance review copy, with slip from Harper & Row indicating that the work was to be published on April 7, three weeks after this inscription was written. The recipient of this copy, Supreme Court Justice Byron White, first met Kennedy in the 1930s when White was studying at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and Kennedy's father was the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Kennedy appointed White to the role of Deputy Attorney General in 1961, and worked closely with him on civil rights issues, taking the lead in protecting the Freedom Riders in Alabama in 1961. Kennedy nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1962 to replace the retiring Justice Charles Evans Whittaker. They remained close friends right up to Kennedy's assassination in 1963; White is mentioned repeatedly in Manchester's account.

Book fine, dust jacket with two short closed tears with tape repairs to verso. An exceptional inscribed association copy.