As the reader knows by now, this book is neither a formal history nor a straightforward memoir, but a half-breed offspring of both genres. It began as an essay for Texas Monthly about growing up in Dallas in the years preceding the assassination of President Kennedy. 1 found myself writing in a vein that was both personal and historical. I did not intend to make myself a character so much as a guiding sensibility to the thoughts and passions of the moment.
When I was asked by the editor of this book, Ann Close, to continue this narrative into recent history, I suddenly began to grope for precedents. I have always enjoyed the art of autobiography, from The Diary of Samuel Pepys to North Toward Home, but there was no more unlikely autobiographer than myself. In my reading experience, people who write about themselves are either famous for other reasons, or they have undergone some profound experience that needs to be shared, or else they have an inward vision that often precludes them from writing about anything else. I did not see my life as being interesting, even to me; it was, at best, representative of my time and my generation. That is the book I have attempted to write, the story of an extraordinary generation as witnessed by one rather ordinary member of it.
If it were more of a history, it would arrive footnoted and indexed; if it were more of a memoir, it would not require an essay such as this. However, since it is neither one nor the other, I believe I owe the reader some explanation of my sources of information and inspiration.
I am grateful to my friends and colleagues who contributed their time and insight. In particular I should like to thank Stephen Harrigan, my friend and reliable sounding board; Gregory Curtis, who commissioned the article that later gave shape to the book; Jan McInroy, who examined the manuscript with her careful eye and provided so many insightful suggestions; Dan Okrent, Jon Larsen, and Jim Fallows, who gave me friendly but unsparing editorial advice; my sisters, Rosalind Wright and Kathleen Minnix, who reminded me of so many forgotten incidents; my parents, Don and Dorothy Wright, who patiently and honestly recalled for me many of the episodes recorded here; and finally my life’s companion, Roberta, who went back to work to make this book possible and whose love and support have given my life, so far, a happy ending.
In the rather small department of literature about Dallas, Texas, I place at the top of the list Dallas, Public and Private by Warren Leslie (Grossman, 1964), a book that was written after the assassination to explain Dallas to itself and to the nation. Also invaluable to me were Stanley Marcus’s memoir, Minding the Store (Little, Brown, 1974), and A. C. Greene’s Dallas USA (Texas Monthly Press, 1984). There is, in addition, a fine history of the city as told through its buildings and builders, in Dallas Architecture, by David Dillon, with photographs by Doug Tomlinson (Texas Monthly Press, 1985). An angry treatise on Dallas race relations may be found in The Accommodation by Jim Schutze (Citadel Press, 1986). The Super-Americans, by John Bainbridge (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), offers an amusing and informative look at Texas before the assassination. On the political importance of the new world, see Kirkpatrick Sale in Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (Random House, 1975). The anti-Communist hysteria of the fifties in Texas, particularly in Houston, is nicely described in Red Scare! by Don Carleton (Texas Monthly Press, 1985). The best book on preassassination Texas politics is George Norris Green’s The Establishment in Texas Politics (Greenwood Press, 1979). The emigration figures showing the rise of Sunbelt cities and the corresponding decline of the urban Northeast came from Kevin Phillips’s The Emerging Republican Majority (Arlington House, 1969), which is by now a well-established classic of political science. Anyone interested in the bizarre life of H. L. Hunt will enjoy Texas Rich (W. W. Norton, 1981) by Harry Hurt III, the standard biography of this anarchistic personality. There is also an insightful glance at Hunt in Robert Sherrill’s The Accidental President (Grossman, 1967). The true dimensions of Hunt’s mansion, as well as his relationship to Lily Pons, are mentioned in Dallas USA. Some information about Dan Smoot may be found in Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein’s Danger on the Right (Random House, 1964). The Life Line editorial about firearms is in Sherrill. A hard look at Dr. Criswell is Dick J. Reavis’s article, “The Politics of Armageddon,” in the October 1984 issue of Texas Monthly. The quote about Kennedy’s election being “the end of religious freedom” is in Hurt. More on Criswell and the religious scene may be found in Joe Edward Barnhart’s The Southern Baptist Holy War (Texas Monthly Press, 1986). The anecdote about Arthur Ashe and the building of the public tennis courts in Dallas was reported years ago on the KERA-TV “Newsroom” show, and was reconfirmed for me by a longtime member of the Dallas Country Club. The account of the desegregation of the Zodiac Room, as well as the information about the banning of art and literature in Dallas, came from Leslie. The Edna Ferber incident is recounted by A. C. Greene. Earle Cabell’s relationship to the John Birch Society is mentioned in William Manchester’s Death of a President (Harper & Row, 1967), which is a reliable source for much of the worst that can be said about the city.
Much of my information about Bruce Alger came from interviews with two of Dallas’s most notable journalists, A. C. Greene and Hugh Aynesworth. There is additional information to be found in John R. Knaggs’s Two-Party Texas (Eakin Press, 1986), and in George Norris Green. The files of the Texas Observer were also helpful (the February 7, 1964, issue in particular). Of course, the enduring account of the 1960 campaign is Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1960. Among the contemporary books that look back at that campaign, I was influenced by Allen J. Matusow in The Unraveling of America (Harper & Row, 1984); Charles R. Morris in A Time of Passion (Harper & Row, 1984); and Godfrey Hodgson in America in Our Time (Doubleday, 1976). Since each of these books covers a span of time also accounted for in this book, I can only say that I am grateful that the authors wrote their books before I wrote mine. Their influence may be felt throughout this work. In reference to the voluminous literature concerning both Kennedy and Nixon, I have benefited from a multitude of authors. There are too many “standard” works to name here, and to do so would obscure the writers who most affected me. On the subject of Kennedy, I would point to two extraordinary books, The Kennedy Promise, by Henry Fairlie (Doubleday, 1972), and The Kennedy Imprisonment, by Garry Wills (Little, Brown, 1982). Nixon had the benefit of surviving to write his own memoirs, Six Crises (Doubleday, 1962), and RN (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978). To my mind, the single most incisive book about Nixon is also by Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes (Houghton Mifflin, 1970). Dr. Criswell’s “Ha-ha” is quoted in the September 14, 1960, Dallas Morning News. For the liberal eastern attitude toward Lyndon Johnson, see Eric F. Goldman’s The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf, 1968). The Adolphus incident is recounted in newspapers of the time, as well as in Leslie, and in Merle Miller’s oral biography, Lyndon (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980). Judge Irving Goldberg of Dallas, who was at the Adolphus with Johnson, shared his memory of the occasion with me. There are also invaluable records and photographs in the collection of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. Incidentally, Nixon never lost the feeling that Johnson had set up the entire episode. According to William Safire in Before the Fall (Doubleday, 1975), the lesson Nixon drew from the incident, which he passed along to Vice President Agnew, was “If anybody pushes your wife, tell her to fall down.” John Tower’s presence at the affair, long a rumor in Dallas, was confirmed to me through his press secretary.
A good look at the Dallas Morning News and its history is Peter Elkind’s article “The Legacy of Citizen Robert” in the July 1985 Texas Monthly. On the subject of celebrity, I refer the reader in particular to Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image (Atheneum, 1962), which appeared at the height of the Kennedy phenomenon. A good account of the Ole Miss riots and General Walker’s involvement is in Arthur M. Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days (Houghton Mifflin, The Riverside Press, 1965). Also see Life magazine, October 12, 1962. Walker was charged with public lewdness in two Dallas parks, on June 23, 1976, and March 15, 1977. In the first instance, he pleaded no contest and received a suspended sentence and paid a thousand-dollar fine. There was no conviction following the second arrest. The best source about Oswald’s attempt on General Walker’s life is in Marina and Lee, by Priscilla Johnson McMillan (Harper & Row, 1977), which is also the source for many of the details I have included about Oswald’s life. It is, I believe, the most insightful book available on the subject of Oswald’s character. Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald, by his brother Robert Oswald, with Myrick and Barbara Land (Coward-McCann, 1967) is helpful, as is, of course, the Report of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (McGraw-Hill, 1964). On the National Indignation Convention and the right-wing scene in general, see Newsweek, December 4, 1961 (“Thunder on the Right”), and Life, February 9, 1962 (“Who’s Who in the Tumult of the Far Right”). There is a fine eyewitness report on the assault on Adlai Stevenson in the Texas Observer (“An Early Hallowe’en in Big D,”), November 1, 1963. I have benefited from personal accounts by friends who were at the Memorial Auditorium that night. Stanley Marcus also recalls the episode in his memoirs. The assertion that Oswald was present at the Stevenson incident comes from the December 13, 1963, Texas Observer (“Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”) and the December 27, 1963, Texas Observer (“Oswald and Others: Persisting Suspicions”), in which Ronnie Dugger reports that “two Dallas women say they saw [Oswald] leading a group of five or six or so pickets before the Stevenson meeting opened.” The “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” article also refers to Oswald’s speech to the ACLU. A psychological “quasi symposium” on the subject of Oswald may be found in the Journal of Individual Psychology, vol. 23, May 1967. See also David Abrahamsen, “A Study of Lee Harvey Oswald: Psychological Capability of Murder” in the October 1967 Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. The “pseudocommunity” is described in a paper published in Psychiatry, vol. 32, no. 1, February 1969 (“Symbolic Aspects of Presidential Assassination”), by Edwin A. Weinstein and Olga G. Lyerly. For Oswald in Russia, I consulted McMillan, and also Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, by Edward Jay Epstein (Reader’s Digest Press, McGraw-Hill, 1978). For Goldwater, I relied on Richard Rovere, The Coldwater Caper (Harcourt-Brace & World, 1963). On the subject of Texas politics in 1963, I have been greatly assisted by the patient recollections of former senator Ralph Yarborough. See also Knaggs, Schlesinger, Manchester, Miller, and Charles Ashman, Connally: The Adventures of Big Bad John (William Morrow, 1974). Yarborough, incidentally, has always disputed the report that Kennedy came to Texas to resolve the quarrel between him and Connally; indeed, this is one subject where Yarborough and Connally find agreement. On the paralysis of the Kennedy administration, I referred to Hodgson, I. F. Stone’s In a Time of Torment (Random House, 1967), Morris, Fairlie, and Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (Basic Books, 1984).
Thomas Hine makes an interesting point in his book Populuxe (Knopf, 1986) about the shift in emphasis from air-raid shelters to suburban fallout shelters, which made the family the unit of survival, not the community. Six months after he began the campaign for home shelters, Kennedy tried to call off the program. “Let us concentrate on keeping enemy bombers and missiles away from our shores and less on keeping neighbors away from our shelters,” he said, but by then, as Hine points out, the idea of nuclear holocaust had been redefined as “a radical form of suburbanization by other means.” On Kennedy’s war record, I consulted Wills (1982); Joan and L. Clay Blair, Jr.’s, The Search for JFK (Berkley, 1976); and Victor Lasky, J.F.K: The Man and the Myth (Dell paperback, 1977). The assertions about the authorship of Profiles in Courage come from Wills. For the game-show and payola scandals, I referred to The Glory and the Dream, by William Manchester (Little, Brown, 1973).
The subject of fraud in the 1960 campaign has been a source of frustration for many reporters (including myself), who would like to establish the truth, finally, about who really won that election. For contemporary accounts of the fraud, see December 1 and 11, 1960, Chicago Tribune; December 4, 5, and 6, 1960, New York Herald Tribune; December 15, 1960, The New York Times; November 22, 26, 28, 29, and December 1 and 10, 1960, Houston Chronicle; November 20, 22, and 26, and December 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, and 18, 1960, Houston Post; December 10 and 11, 1960, Austin Statesman; November 20, 26, and December 8, 1960, Dallas Morning News; November 30, and December 1, 1960, Lufkin News; and the December 2, 1960, Christian Science Monitor. See also Richard Wilson in Look magazine for February 14, 1961 (“How to Steal an Election”). White (1961) discusses the subject of fraud, and again in Breach of Faith (Atheneum, Reader’s Digest, 1975). Lasky mentions it in It Didn’t Start with Watergate (Dial Press, 1977). See also John H. Davis’s The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster (McGraw-Hill paperback, 1985). For an analysis of the manipulation of the “river ward” votes in Chicago, see William Brashler’s The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana (Harper & Row, 1977). I have also benefited from several interviews with Austin attorney Hardy Hollers, who handled the court case on behalf of the Republican party, which sought a recount of the Texas vote. The petition was refused. “We knew what happened,” says Hollers, “but we couldn’t prove it. We couldn’t prove it because we couldn’t get into the ballots.”
On Governor Shivers’s advice to Nixon, see Sam Kinch and Stuart Long, Allan Shivers: The Pied Piper of Texas Politics (Shoal Creek, 1973).
Richard Nixon himself never lost the feeling that he was cheated of victory in the 1960 election. He made sure that it would never happen again. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover’s biographer, interviewed former FBI agent Louis Nichols (since deceased), who was hired by Nixon to prevent the 1968 election from being stolen as well. According to Gentry: “Nixon appointed Nichols to his six-man advisory board, placing him in charge of ballot security. Nichols in turn (with Hoover’s secret cooperation) recruited a task force of former FBI agents to monitor key precincts. Again according to Nichols … although Texas was stolen, his program ‘saved Illinois, New Jersey and several other states.’ ” Following the election, “the president-elect summoned Nichols to his suite in the Hotel Pierre, where he told him: ‘Lou, you saved the election for us …’ ” (Letter to the author from Gentry.) About the 1960 election, Nixon himself has noted, in a letter forwarded to me, that “Eisenhower strongly urged that the election be contested and offered to raise the money needed for recounts in Illinois and Texas.” Nixon goes on to say: “I think there is a good chance that we could have won in the courts, but in the process the damage to the country would have been enormous. When a House or Senate seat is involved, which party wins that seat has only marginal effect. Where the Presidency is concerned a void, particularly in foreign policy, for even a few weeks, let alone a year or so, is simply unacceptable.” In response to my query about the 1960 vote fraud possibly contributing to the paranoia that led to the Watergate scandals, Nixon responds: “Certainly, my close political associates were all determined that we make sure that we not be counted out again. But those precautions were necessary in 1968, which we knew was going to be a close election, rather than in 1972, when a landslide was assured from the time that we knew McGovern had the Democratic nomination locked up. I suppose it could be argued that because we knew from experience that Larry O’Brien and his associates played rough, we had to develop the capability to meet them on their own ground. But I believe that [the author] would be reaching to develop the thesis that the 1960 vote frauds directly led to Watergate.”
I am aware that the Warren Commission states that the “wanted poster” handbill appeared on the streets of Dallas on the day before the assassination, but my own memory is that I found it on our doorstep on November 22. Nellie Connally has told her story to the Warren Commission, and to Michael Drury in the August 1964 McCall’s magazine (“Since That Day in Dallas”). My memory of the church service on November 24 was refreshed by conversations with my former pastor, Bishop Robert Goodrich, who died several months after my interview with him. He recalled that many preachers in town had received anonymous phone calls that Sunday, warning them “not to say anything to damage the image of Dallas.” For the “dearth of dreams” following the assassination, see Joseph Katz in Journal of Individual Psychology, May 1967, vol. 23 (“President Kennedy’s Assassination: Freudian Comments”). For a larger picture of political assassination in various contexts, I referred to Society and the Assassin, by Bernhardt J. Hurwood (Parent’s Magazine Press, 1970), and particularly American Assassins, by James W. Clarke (Princeton University Press, 1982). Cardinal Spellman is quoted in Gerald W. Johnson’s America Watching (Stemmer House, 1976). Oswald’s glance at Jack Ruby was noticed by Ronnie Dugger in the December 27, 1963, Texas Observer (“Oswald and Others …”). About Jack Ruby, I consulted the Warren Commission reports, Melvin Belli’s book, and Jack Ruby by Garry Wills and Ovid Demaris (New American Library, 1968). On assassination literature in general, I have been most strongly influenced by the work of Edward Jay Epstein, in Inquest (Viking, 1966), Counterplot: The Garrison Case (Viking, 1969), and particularly the aforementioned Legend, an engrossing study of Oswald and his relationships with the intelligence agencies of both the United States and Russia. Epstein satisfies, for me, the physical questions concerning the path of the bullets, and the elapsed time of the assassination, which he shows was not 5.6 seconds, as postulated by the Warren Commission, but 7 seconds. He is also persuasive in overruling the “single bullet” theory, showing that Kennedy and Connally were hit by two separate bullets, and that a third bullet then struck Kennedy—all of them fired from Oswald’s rifle (see Epstein’s Appendix A). A sympathetic and knowing overview of assassination theories in general can be found in the November 1983 Texas Monthly, by Ron Rosenbaum (“Still on the Case”).
According to Mary Ferrell, an assassination researcher and archivist, Delilah (Marilyn Magyar Miranda Moone Walle) married Leonard Walle of New Orleans, who shot her eight times on August 31, 1966, on their honeymoon in Omaha, Nebraska. Ferrell says that Ruby’s sister, Eva Grant, reported that Ruby was upset about Delilah’s testimony before the Warren Commission, but Ferrell has been unable to find any such testimony. Omaha police records show that Leonard Walle was arrested September 1, 1966, and charged with second-degree murder. He received a life sentence. On the Garrison investigation, I referred to his own account, Heritage of Stone (Berkley, 1970); Epstein (1969); Robert Sam Anson in “They’ve Killed the President!” (Bantam paperback, 1975); and James Kirkwood’s American Grotesque (Simon and Schuster, 1970). A sardonic look at the Garrison case from an investigator who worked for him is by Tom Bethell in the March 1975 Washington Monthly (“Was Sirhan Sirhan on the Grassy Knoll?”). About Carlos Marcello and Bobby Kennedy, see Rosenbaum’s article, and The Kennedys: An American Drama, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz (Summit, 1984). Warren Rogers in the August 26, 1969, Look (“The Persecution of Clay Shaw”) notes that Garrison had been discharged from the army in 1952, suffering from chronic, moderate anxiety reaction, characterized by hypochondria, exhaustion syndrome, gastrointestinal discomfort, and an allergy to lint. “He was also found to have a mother dependency,” writes Rogers. “He was diagnosed as totally incapacitated for military service and moderately impaired for civilian life. Long-term psychotherapy was recommended.” Later, after Clay Shaw’s acquittal, Garrison himself was accused of sexually molesting a boy in a New Orleans athletic club, according to Jack Anderson’s column of February 23, 1970. Anson notes that Garrison was acquitted of that charge, as he was of subsequent federal charges of income-tax evasion and conspiring to protect pinball operators. Charles Whitman, “nation’s youngest Eagle Scout,” as noted in his police file, quoted in the July 6, 1986, Austin American-Statesman (“Secret File Describes UT Sniper”).
The Eisenhower quote is in William B. Ewald’s Eisenhower the President (Prentice-Hall, 1981). I was drawn to this book by a citation in Tom Wicker’s insightful article in the December 1983 Esquire, which glances back at the presidential decisions that led America into Vietnam (“Hey, Hey, LBJ …”). See Wicker also on Kennedy’s decision to go into Vietnam in JFK and LBJ (William Morrow, 1968); Manchester (1974); “John F. Kennedy” in the CBS News Collector’s Series (1981); George McT. Kahin’s Intervention (Knopf, 1986); and David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest (Random House, 1972). Halberstam and Wicker (1968) differ on the number of U.S. advisers in Vietnam at the time of Kennedy’s death: Wicker says “about 25,000”; Halberstam says 16,900. Kahin says “over sixteen thousand.” I rely on Halberstam, which remains in my opinion the most compelling account of America’s entry into Vietnam. Hodgson is especially good on the cost of the war. About the pessimism of youth, see Barbara Cummiskey in the May 25, 1962, Life (“The Voice of the Nego”). The “nego,” besides being a phrase that never caught on, was defined as “a young man who cannot find any basis for the standards of morality most adults take for granted: faith in life, religion, ethics, judgments of right and wrong.”
On Johnson and the Kennedy circle, I consulted Lawrence O’Brien’s No Final Victories (Doubleday, 1974); Hodgson; Doris Kearns’s biography, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Harper & Row, 1976); Wicker (1968); Halberstam; and Kahin. I have also enjoyed frequent conversations with Michael Gillette, Chief of Oral History and Acquisitions at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, and benefited from the generous access to their files. Liz Carpenter’s quote is in Miller. She has also shared her memories personally with me on several occasions. Johnson’s quote about Bobby Kennedy’s calculating how to prevent him from assuming the presidency is in the oral history files of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library (August 12, 1969, conversation with William J. Jorden). The invention of the Camelot myth is revealed in Theodore H. White’s autobiography, In Search of History (Harper & Row, 1978). About Bobby Kennedy and the 1968 election, I relied on An American Melodrama by Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page (Viking, 1969); also Matusow; Jack Newfield in Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (Dutton, 1969); Hodgson (1978); Jean Stein and George Plimpton, editors, in American Journey: The Life and Times of Robert Kennedy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); Victor Lasky in Robert F. Kennedy: The Myth and the Man (Pocket Books paperback, 1971); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in Robert Kennedy and His Times (Houghton Mifflin, 1978); David Halberstam in The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy (Random House, 1968); William L. O’Neill in Coming Apart (Quadrangle, 1971); and Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1968 (Atheneum, 1969). On McCarthy and Humphrey, besides many of the same sources cited above, I used Miami and the Siege of Chicago, by Norman Mailer (New American Library, 1968); Phillips; Morris; and Curt Smith in Long Time Gone: The Years of Turmoil Remembered (Icarus Press, 1982). On Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, I referred to the BBC documentary “Marilyn: Say Goodbye to the President,” which details Marilyn’s relations with the Kennedy brothers, and Jimmy Hoffa’s knowledge of the affairs. Stokeley Carmichael’s quote comes from Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton in Black Power (Vintage paperback, 1967). The figures detailing the violence that followed Martin Luther King’s death are from Schlesinger (1978) and Gerald W. Johnson. I have learned much about the history of the civil rights movement from the passionate recountings of Pat Watters in The South and the Nation (Pantheon, 1969), Down to Now (Pantheon, 1971), and, with Reese Cleghorn, in Climbing Jacob’s Ladder (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967). Another valued work is the oral history My Soul Is Rested, by Howell Raines (Putnam, 1977), which was especially helpful on Martin Luther King. I also used David Levering Lewis’s biography, King (University of Illinois, 1970). Lincoln’s dream is in Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ward Hill Lamon (Osgood & Co., 1872). For diverging contemporary interpretations of it, see Patricide in the House Divided, by George B. Forgie (Norton, 1979), and Dwight G. Anderson’s Abraham Lincoln: The Quest for Immortality (Knopf, 1982). The assertion that Lincoln’s hat was twice shot off is in John Cottrell’s Anatomy of an Assassination (Funk and Wagnalls, 1966). Kennedy’s premonition is in Manchester (1967). Theodore C. Sorenson, incidentally, goes out of his way in the epilogue to Kennedy (Harper & Row, 1965) to refute the notion that Kennedy foresaw his death, or that he had a morbid fascination with it, as so many historians believe. For King’s last day, see Ralph David Abernathy’s moving account in Raines (1977). The quotes from Reagan and Nixon about Bobby Kennedy are in Lasky (1971). About Sirhan I consulted Clarke, Godfrey Jansen in Why Robert Kennedy Was Killed (The Third Press, 1970), and Robert Blair Kaiser in “R.F.K. Must Die!” (Dutton, 1970). The quotes from Quinn and McCarthy come from Stein and Plimpton.
On the subject of Johnson’s secret summit, I was assisted by conversations with Michael Gillette at the Johnson Library, and with former White House press secretary George Christian.
One of my friends who avoided the draft wrote a brave and penetrating essay on his experience, and the social distortions caused by the draft: see James Fallows in the October 1975 Washington Monthly (“What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?”). About the draft in general, the most useful source for me was Lawrence Baskir and William A. Strauss’s Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (Knopf, 1978). I also relied on Myra MacPherson in Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation (Doubleday, 1984) and John Wheeler in Touched with Fire: The Future of the Vietnam Generation (Franklin Watts, 1984). Muhammad Ali’s draft experience is recounted in his autobiography, The Greatest (with Richard Durham; Random House, 1975); also by Irwin Shaw in the June 1983 Esquire (“The Conscience of a Heavyweight”).
About Nasser, I used Anthony Nutting’s biography, Nasser (Dutton, 1972) and Egypt: Military Society, by Anouar Abdel-Malek (Random House, 1968).
On the Baby Boom, I referred to Landon Y. Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980). The views on Georgia’s farm economy reflect interviews with former Georgia agriculture commissioner Tommy Irvin, and the legendary secretary of state, Ben Fortsen (since deceased). For more on Will Campbell, see Thomas L. Connelly’s biography, Will Campbell and the Soul of the South (Continuum, 1982); Frye Gaillard in Race, Rock & Religion (East Woods Press, 1982); Marshall Frady in Southerners (New American Library, 1980); and Campbell’s own memoir, Brother to a Dragonfly (Seabury Press, 1977).
Leo Rangell’s quote comes from his book, The Mind of Watergate (Norton, 1980). Kennedy’s “no class” quote is from the 1960 campaign and is mentioned in White (1975). On Nixon’s constituency, see Fawn M. Brodie in Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (Norton, 1981); and especially Safire, who is also insightful on Nixon versus the Eastern Establishment, as is Henry Kissinger in White House Years (Little, Brown, 1979); and Leonard and Mark Silk in The American Establishment (Basic Books, 1980). About Hiss I consulted Brodie; Wills (1971); Earl Mazo in Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait (Harper & Brothers, 1959); as well as Nixon (1962 and 1978). For the Checkers speech I used the same sources, as well as Henry D. Spalding in The Nixon Nobody Knows (Jonathan David, 1972). I also referred to Herbert G. Klein, Making It Perfectly Clear (Doubleday, 1980), on Old Nixon versus New. Candidate Nixon patting his breast pocket was observed by Halberstam. Nixon’s liberalism is detailed in Murray; Curt Smith; White (1975); Morris; Gary Allen in Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask (Western Islands paperback, 1971); and in The Great Nixon Turnaround, Lloyd C. Gardner, editor (New Viewpoints paperback, 1973). See also Representative Richard Cheney’s comments in Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover’s Wake Us When It’s Over (Macmillan, 1985). Nixon’s secret plan is in H. R. Haldeman’s The Ends of Power (New York Times Books, 1978). The chronology of the Watergate developments is found in Rangell; also in The Breaking of a President: The Nixon Connection, Marvin Miller, compiler (Classic Publications, 1975). About McGovern, I referred to Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1972 (Atheneum, 1973) and Norman Mailer in St. George and the Godfather (New American Library paperback, 1972). I was also assisted in conversation with former McGovern aide Allan Stone. Safire is especially insightful on the 1972 election. Dean’s story is told in Blind Ambition by John W. Dean III (Simon and Schuster, 1976). The bug under the bed at Camp David is revealed in the May 19, 1986, Newsweek (“The Road Back”). I referred to the Watergate transcripts compiled by the Washington Post in The Presidential Transcripts (Dell paperback, 1974). The Kleindienst episode is detailed in Marvin Miller. On Agnew, see his account in Go Quietly … or Else (Morrow, 1980); also Richard M. Cohen, Jack W. Germond, and Jules Witcover in A Heartbeat Away (Viking, 1974). Andrew Johnson’s impeachment is an ancient prejudice of mine, and if one wishes to pursue the scheming of Edwin Stanton, that mysterious and morbid personality, consult Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War, by Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman (Knopf, 1962). The impeachment proceedings are reproduced in The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States (Dover paperback, 1974, a reproduction of the 1868 version published by T. B. Peterson & Brothers).
On Manson I referred to Heiter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi, with Curt Gentry (Norton, 1974); and David Felton and David Dalton in the June 25, 1970, Rolling Stone (“Charles Manson: The Incredible Story of the Most Dangerous Man Alive”). Jerry Rubin’s account is in We Are Everywhere (Harper & Row, 1971). The transcendental meditationist episode is in Somoza, by Bernard Diederich (Dutton, 1981). Figures on the Great Society came from a forum on the subject at the Johnson Library in 1985; also from Murray and Matusow. On the New York City blackout, see Charles E. Silberman, Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice (Random House, 1978). My first account of the Lazy B 3 (“Trials of Justice”) was in the August 4, 1972, American Report, a publication of the Clergy and Laymen Concerned. The second account is in the June 27, 1975, New Times (“The Lazy B 3 in Black and White”). The detail about the money being burned on the roof of the American embassy during the fall of Saigon came from an interview with an intelligence officer who was in the embassy compound. See also Stanley Karnow’s authoritative Vietnam (Century, 1983) and Richard Nixon’s No More Vietnams (Arbor House, 1985)—a book one should not read with much trust. I also consulted The New York Times during that period. On the boat people, I referred to Newsweek on April 17, 1978 (“The Debris of Our War”), June 25, 1979 (“Boat People Backlash”), July 2, 1979 (“Agony of the Boat People” and “Home of the Brave”); and to Time on July 2, 1979 (“Facing a ‘Liquid Auschwitz’ ”). UN Ambassador Vernon Walters places the number of boat people at two million in the May 31, 1985, New York Times. Morris is insightful on the consequences of the Communist takeover, as is Kissinger. The Vietnamese birth rates are quoted in Norman Podhoretz, Why We Were in Vietnam (Simon and Schuster, 1983).
On Lester Maddox, see Marshall Frady in Southerners, and Bruce Galphin in The Riddle of Lester Maddox (Camelot, 1968). My brief account of that gubernatorial election is in the August 1974 Progressive (“Lester’s Loose Again”). The best reference for the New South during this period is The Americanization of Dixie, by John Egerton (Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974). On Carter, I relied on his own memoirs, Why Not the Best? (Broadman, 1975) and Keeping Faith (Bantam, 1982); also James Wooton in Dasher: The Roots and Rising of Jimmy Carter (Summit Books, 1978); Leslie Wheeler in Jimmy Who? (Barron’s paperback, 1976); Victor Lasky in Jimmy Carter: The Man and the Myth (Richard Marek, 1979); and Garry Wills in the June 1976 Atlantic Monthly (“The Plains Truth”). About the spiritual appeal of Carter, see the curious Jimmy Carter and American Fantasy, edited by Lloyd deMause and Henry Ebel (Two Continents/Psychohistory Press, 1977). Lewis Lapham, in Fortune’s Child (Doubleday, 1980), is interesting on the subject of Carter as a focus for popular discontent with the Eastern Establishment. The most influential article, for me, during the Carter campaign was Hunter Thompson’s account of Carter’s Law Day speech, which is in the June 3, 1976, Rolling Stone (“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Third-Rate Romance, Low-Rent Rendezvous”). On the failure of the Carter administration, see James Fallows in the May and June, 1979, Atlantic Monthly (“The Passionless Presidency”). A good account of Carter’s presidency is Frye Gaillard’s series in the July 7–11, 1985, Charlotte Observer. On human rights and Carter’s foreign policy, I used Gaddis Smith’s sympathetic and perceptive account in Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (Hill and Wang, 1986). The best source on America’s role in the Iranian revolution is Gary Sick’s All Fall Down (Random House, 1985); also useful is Barry Rubin’s Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience in Iran (Oxford, 1980). Khomeini’s Man of the Year interview is in Time, January 7, 1980 (“The Mystic Who Lit the Fires of Hatred”). A good perspective on Iran before and after the shah is in Paul Johnson’s monumental history, Modern Times (Harper & Row, 1983). On the effect of Iran on Carter’s reelection bid, see John F. Stack, Watershed: The Campaign for the Presidency, 1980 (Times Books, 1981).
My account of the Apollo astronauts is in the July 1979 Look (“Ten Years Later … The Moonwalkers”). On John Hinckley and his family, I consulted court records; I interviewed his father, Jack Hinckley, and the family pastor, Charles V. Westapher; I interviewed psychiatrists who analyzed Hinckley, including Dr. David Michael Bear, Dr. Tom Goldman, Dr. Jonas Rappaport, and Dr. Park Dietz; I also consulted Jack and JoAnn Hinckley’s memoir, Breaking Points (with Elizabeth Sherrill, Chosen Books, 1985). Aaron Latham’s profile of Hinckley in the August 5, 1982, Rolling Stone (“The Dark Side of the American Dream”) is helpful. The detail about Hinckley purchasing the same kind of gun Oswald used is from the testimony of his personal psychiatrist, William T. Carpenter, Jr., as is the “replenish the arsenal” quote. Reagan’s presence at Ford’s Theater was footnoted in an editorial by Lewis Lapham in the June 1981 Harper’s (“Shooting Stars”). On the similarity of Reagan and Kennedy, I referred to Lou Cannon in Reagan (Putnam, 1982) and Morris. Reagan’s Waterbury speech is quoted in the September 20, 1984, Austin American-Statesman (“President Remembers JFK in Connecticut”). V. S. Naipaul has an interesting account of the GOP Convention in the October 25, 1984, New York Review of Books (“Among the Republicans”). Apparently Naipaul was listening to my interview with Cleaver when he reports that “the very simplicity of [Cleaver] … made the journalists ask only the obvious questions.” I am grateful to historian Conover Hunt for her guided tour of the Texas School Book Depository.