The Death of a President - First Edition

The Death of a President: November 20–November 25, 1963 is historian William Manchester's 1967 account of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. The book gained public attention before it was published when Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, who had initially asked Manchester to write the book, demanded that the author make changes in the manuscript.

During early 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy commissioned Manchester to produce an account of the assassination. She and the Kennedy family wanted a definitive telling of the events to preempt other books, including Jim Bishop's forthcoming The Day Kennedy Was Shot. Kennedy was familiar with Manchester's work through Portrait of a President: John F. Kennedy in Profile, his account of the president's first year and a half as President. Manchester had met and grown to admire John Kennedy when both were recovering from war wounds in Boston.