McGinniss, Joe 1942–

PERSONAL: Born December 9, 1942, in New York, NY; son of Joseph Aloysius (a travel agent) and Mary (Leonard) McGinniss; married Christine Cooke, September 25, 1965 (divorced); married Nancy Doherty (an editor and photographer), November 20, 1976; children: (first marriage) Christine, Suzanne, Joe; (second marriage) Matthew, James. Education: Holy Cross College, B.S., 1964.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster Publicity Dept., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Port Chester Daily Item, Port Chester, NY, reporter, 1964; Worcester Telegram, Worcester, MA, reporter, 1965; Philadelphia Bulletin, Philadelphia, PA, reporter, 1966; Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, columnist, 1967–68; freelance writer, 1968–. Lecturer in writing at Bennington College.

WRITINGS:

The Selling of the President, 1968, Trident (New York,NY), 1969, reprinted with an introduction by the author as The Selling of the President, 1988.

The Dream Team (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 1972.

Heroes, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

Going to Extremes, Knopf (New York, NY), 1980.

Fatal Vision, Putnam (New York, NY), 1983.

Blind Faith, Putnam (New York, NY), 1988.

Cruel Doubt, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY),1991.

The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy,Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1993.

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1999.

The Big Horse, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY),2004.

Contributor of articles to Harper's, Sports Illustrated, TV Guide, and other periodicals.

ADAPTATIONS: The Selling of the President, 1968 was adapted for stage by Stuart Hample; Fatal Vision was filmed as a television miniseries that aired in 1984; Blind Faith and Cruel Doubt were adapted as television miniseries by National Broadcasting Company, Inc. (NBC).

SIDELIGHTS: Joe McGinniss is a noted nonfiction author whose works are characterized by an intense personal involvement with the topics at hand. Since the late 1960s, McGinniss, a former journalist, has concentrated on writing full-length books; his research has taken him to the upper reaches of Alaska as well as far and wide through the lower forty-eight states and across the Atlantic Ocean to Italy. Several of his titles, including The Selling of the President, 1968 and Fatal Vision, have been best-sellers in the nonfiction market and have proven controversial in both their subjects and their composition. These and others of the author's works, including The Dream Team, Heroes, and Going to Extremes, have been praised for their insights and cogency of expression.

McGinniss was born in New York City late in 1942. He grew up in Rye, New York, and he received a bachelor of science degree from Holy Cross College in 1964. He immediately went to work as a reporter for the Port Chester Daily Item. Within months he landed a job in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the Worcester Telegram. McGinniss worked as a general assignment reporter at both newspapers, but he aspired to sportswriting. He finally achieved that goal at the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1966 and was so successful that the rival Philadelphia Inquirer offered him a sports column. After only a year with the Bulletin he went to the Inquirer, not as a sports writer but as a general issues columnist—a coveted position, especially for a writer several years shy of thirty. According to New Republic reviewer John Os-borne, McGinniss became known in Philadelphia as "something of a journalistic prodigy, a sharpshooter with minimal regard for reportorial niceties and a special appeal to young readers." McGinniss aimed at the biggest issues—the escalation of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, and the 1968 presidential primaries. The political climate of the late 1960s prepared him for his first book, The Selling of the President, 1968.

A chance conversation on a commuter train in 1968 led McGinniss to an astonishing subject. The journalist discovered that each presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, employed a team of advertising executives to create an "image" that would make the candidate more palatable to television viewers. McGinniss's commuter train contact was with the "Humphrey account," but McGinniss could not persuade that camp to reveal its secrets. Instead he turned to the Nixon campaign, where the media advisors accorded him an unusually intimate view of the marketing of candidate Nixon. Quitting his job at the Inquirer, McGinniss traveled with the Nixon team for five months. "My great advantage was that I wasn't considered press," he told a contributor to Life magazine. "I was the guy writing a book."

Publication of The Selling of the President, 1968 caused a sensation. The book was on the bestseller list for seven months, topping the list for four. McGinniss had the distinction of becoming the youngest author of nonfiction—excepting Anne Frank—ever to have penned such a blockbuster. Nixon's aides were shocked to discover that the innocuous young observer who had watched them at work had revealed their attempts to manipulate the electorate. Reviewers, on the other hand, have praised McGinniss for his revelations. Christian Century contributor Robert Miller wrote: "Readers with illusions about the relationship of media and message in a large-scale political campaign will quickly be disillusioned by this book. McGinniss gives a behind-the-scenes look at a group of men and women using a very effective TV technique to help their client win the presidency of the U.S. At times this book will scare you." In the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the work "a series of smartly turned-out scenes from backstage at the 1968 Presidential turkey raffle" and added that what McGinniss saw and heard "he has recorded artfully enough to simultaneously entertain us and make us fear for the future of the Republic."

National notoriety at age twenty-seven can be daunting. McGinniss's next two books, The Dream Team and Heroes, both explore the pleasures and perils of fame, premature and otherwise. In the novel The Dream Team, a bestselling author on tour promoting his book becomes sidetracked by horse racing, alcohol, and the attentions of a young television reporter. Heroes, a nonfiction work, consists of a series of interviews with prominent national figures from several walks of life; critics have contended that the book reveals as much about its author's emotional turmoil as it does about the men he interviewed. McGinniss invested much time and effort in the projects, and both were modest successes. Then, in 1975 he opted for a complete change of environment and subject matter. Journeying to Alaska, he spent a year documenting life in that beautiful but inhospitable state. The resulting book, Going to Extremes, offers a glimpse at the underside of Alaska's economic expansion. New Republic correspondent Dan Cryer observed that in Going to Extremes, McGinniss "has succeeded well in capturing an Alaska on the verge of selling its soul to big oil…. He is a first-rate reporter whose stories graphically convey the culture shock wracking present-day Alaska." In the Nation, Mark Kramer concluded that the book "is fine reading. It is thick with whole people, exotic landscapes, the nervous and constant curiosity of an adventurer who knows that the essence of place is more likely found while chatting in barrooms than while viewing the wondrous works of man and nature."

McGinniss's next project consumed more than four years of his life. Fatal Vision, his 1983 bestseller, gives a comprehensive account of the murder conviction of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a man convicted of brutally slaying his pregnant wife and two young daughters. When McGinniss met MacDonald in 1979, the infamous surgeon was facing trial after a series of legal delays and after having been exonerated in a shoddily conducted Army hearing. MacDonald staunchly maintained his innocence in the 1970 triple murder, but as McGinniss began to piece together the evidence he became more and more convinced of the doctor's guilt. According to Joan Barthel in the New York Times Book Review, McGinniss "becomes a genuinely sympathetic character in [Fatal Vision]…. He confronts recurring questions of guilt and innocence and the ambivalence of love…. These things happen when reporters become involved in people's lives and deaths, when a writing project evolves into a kind of selective, if unforeseen and not entirely voluntary, human bondage. It is this involvement, finally, that makes Fatal Vision—even beyond the fascination of the story it tells …—well worth reading."

Throughout his protracted legal battles to stay out of prison, MacDonald was convinced that McGinniss intended to portray him as an innocent victim of police harassment. When Fatal Vision was published, MacDonald—who already was earning a percentage of the profits—sued McGinniss for wooing his further cooperation even though the author believed him to be guilty. A community of fellow writers came to McGinniss's aid in a court case that many felt would determine every nonfiction author's prerogative to formulate independent conclusions. McGinniss maintained that he never led MacDonald to believe the book would absolve him and that it took many months of research and conversations to reach any conclusion at all. In Lehmann-Haupt's opinion, this attitude is reflected in the book. McGinniss "makes it clear to the reader from the start that he was free to decide one way or another about Dr. MacDonald's claim of innocence, and he makes it clear, I think, that Dr. MacDonald knew he was taking his chances," the critic wrote. "Fatal Vision smells of integrity, and that's one of the many things about it that make it irresistible to read, even if its vision of the human soul is somewhat bleak and frightening."

The celebrated court case ended with a deadlocked jury. MacDonald pursued a new trial, prompting McGinniss to agree to an out-of-court settlement without admission of liability. The author told Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times that he accepted the settlement—which he does not have to pay personally—because he wanted to reduce MacDonald's avenues for public attention. Also, he said: "I don't want to give MacDonald the satisfaction of taking me away from productive work again."

Staying in the family vein, McGinniss next turned to events that occurred in Tom's River, New Jersey. Blind Faith tells the story of Rob Marshall, a community leader who was knocked unconscious while checking a flat tire and woke up to find his wallet gone and his wife Maria brutally murdered. During the investigation that followed, police discovered Marshall's affair with a woman in the town, his financial difficulties—and the large insurance policy on Maria's life which may have led him to murder. Anne Rice, reviewing the book for the New York Times, felt that although it is a "small story" with "few larger social lessons," Blind Faith "offers suspenseful and engrossing reading." Chicago Sun-Times contributor Michael Miner was disappointed that McGinniss skims over certain people and details rather than going into depth, but noted that "he has stuffed his book with other details that make it a page-turner."

McGinniss followed Blind Faith with another investigation of a brutal family murder. In 1990 Bonnie Von Stein and her husband were brutally attacked, beaten, and stabbed. Bonnie survived, but her husband did not. The family's great wealth led some to suspect Bonnie of killing her husband for money. But her son from a previous marriage had hired a classmate to murder both his mother and stepfather. Bonnie Von Stein herself asked McGinniss to write the book in order to help her understand her son's heinous deeds and all the other horrors she had endured. According to Linda Steiner in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: "McGinniss managed to incorporate an analysis of several potentially confusing medical, legal, and ethical dilemmas into a highly readable narrative, Cruel Doubt. Indeed, he showed considerable sensitivity." Yet the author probably only exacerbated Bonnie Von Stein's mental and emotional torment by speculating that her daughter was also a conspirator in the crime.

McGinniss's next book brought him the greatest critical scorn he had yet endured in his career. The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy is, on the surface, a biography of controversial senator Edward Kennedy, but it contains a great deal of unsavory material about the entire Kennedy clan. Commentators derided McGinniss's style, which included interjecting thoughts he imagined many of his subjects must have had and which were surmised without the cooperation of any Kennedy family member. "The prose is filled with melodrama and sarcasm," reported Steiner. "More ominously, noted historians William Manchester and Doris Kearns Goodwin claimed McGinniss stole from their published work."

Steiner observed that "although it is saturated with detail, much of [McGinniss's] writing is clichéd and ponderous. Nonetheless, when judged by aesthetic criteria and formal structure, McGinniss's books include many vignettes that might be seen as generally successful pieces of literary journalism…. [His] interest in detecting reality is … similar to the views of scientists and conventional-minded journalists who believe that the consequences of the search itself or of the achievement of 'truth' are irrelevant."

McGinniss's next endeavor, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, is a nonfiction account of a small-town Italian soccer team striving to advance to the premier division of the national soccer league. To write the book, McGinniss traveled to the village of Castel di Sangro, where he watched the team practice, dined with them at meal times, and befriended them in their off hours. He saw them celebrate wins and suffer losses, both on and off the soccer field. Writing for Policy Review, Andea di Robilant reported that "McGinniss has a good eye for the quirky details of daily life in Castel di Sangro." The reviewer noted that McGinniss's "sketchy portrait of Castel di Sangro as a town of high-strung neurotics with a warm heart is a welcome antidote to the recent spate of best sellers peddling the phony image of modern Italy as a sun-drenched land of earthly delights." In American Libraries, reviewer Bill Ott termed The Miracle of Castel di Sangro "utterly compelling."

As with some of McGinniss's past books, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro sparked a controversy. Michael Wolff explained in New York that "The Miracle of Castel di Sangro is an eccentric book—an obsessive tale rather than a universal one…. What's more, McGinniss's story of a haimish soccer team became uncomfortably dark as well—corruption, kickbacks, thrown games, Mafia—adding layers of ambiguity and legal issues to the book." Indeed, the Castel di Sangro soccer club sued McGinniss over a few of the assertions made in the book.

Despite the legal troubles, McGinniss published his next book, The Big Horse, in 2004. The Big Horse offers readers an inside look at the world of horse-racing, with a focus on seventy-five-year-old Hall of Fame trainer P.G. Johnson, whose horse, Volponi, held much promise for the 2003 racing season. Though Volponi fails to live up to his potential, and Johnson's health steadily declines, McGinniss's book, according to a Publishers Weekly contributor, is "a compelling and bittersweet picture of the dying sport of horse-racing." In a review for Booklist, Dennis Dodge noted that McGinnis is "generous" with his insider details, and commented that horse-racing is "a tough game, full of frustration and disappointment, but, when seen through Johnson's eyes, it's a game that is eminently worth playing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 2, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Connery, Thomas B., editor, A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1993.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 32, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 185: American Literary Journalists, 1945–1995, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Lounsberry, Barbara, The Art of Fact: Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1990.

Malcolm, Janet, The Journalist and the Murderer, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.

McGinniss, Joe, Heroes, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

Potter, Jerry Allen, and Fred Bost, Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders, Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

Stull, James N., Literary Selves: Autobiography and Contemporary American Nonfiction, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1993.

PERIODICALS

American Libraries, October, 2000, Bill Ott, review of The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, p. 78.

Atlantic, July, 1976, Richard Todd, review of Heroes, p. 92.

Booklist, July, 2004, Dennis Dodge, review of The Big Horse, p. 1796.

Chicago Sun-Times, January 8, 1989, Michael Miner, review of Blind Faith, p. 12.

Christian Century, February 4, 1970, Robert Miller, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 154.

Christian Science Monitor, November 13, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. C1.

Commonweal, October 24, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 104.

Harper's, October, 1983, review of Fatal Vision, p. 70; August, 1985, review of Fatal Vision, p. 53.

Life, October 10, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 14.

Listener, March 5, 1970, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 318.

Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1987, Kim Murphy, "Civil Trial Brings 'Fatal Vision' Case Back to the Courts," p. 3; July 23, 1987, Kim Murphy, "William F. Buckley Testifies for 'Fatal Vision' Author," p. 24; July 24, 1987, Kim Murphy, "Author of 'Fatal Vision' Betrayed Him, Killer of Wife, Daughters Says," p. 7; August 5, 1987, Kim Murphy, "'Fatal Vision' Trial Could Be Lethal to Nonfiction, Wambaugh Protests," p. 3; August 6, 1987, Kim Murphy, "Author of 'Fatal Vision' Testifies He Feared for the Safety of His Family," p. 28; November 24, 1987, Kim Murphy, "Killer Wins Settlement on 'Fatal Vision,'"p. 1; January 25, 1995, Bob Pool, "Back-Seat Treatment Rankles Many Journalists," p. A13.

Nation, September 27, 1980, Mark Kramer, review of Going to Extremes, p. 290; November 12, 1983, Ann Jones, review of Fatal Vision, p. 471.

National Review, November 18, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 1173.

New Republic, October 11, 1969, John Osborne, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 26; November 15, 1980, Dan Cryer, review of Going to Extremes, p. 36; October 24, 1983, Josephine Hen-din, review of Fatal Vision, p. 35.

New Statesman, March 6, 1970, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 329; June 1, 1973, review of The Dream Team, p. 871.

Newsweek, October 13, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 119; September 22, 1980, review of Going to Extremes, p. 83; September 12, 1983, Gene Lyons, review of Fatal Vision, p. 76.

New York, October, 1999, Michael Wolff, "Publish and Perish."

New Yorker, December 27, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 57; October 3, 1983, review of Fatal Vision, p. 130.

New York Times, October 3, 1969, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 43; May 9, 1972, review of The Dream Team, p. 39; April 27, 1976, review of Heroes, p. 33; September 21, 1983, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Fatal Vision, p. 23; August 22, 1987, "'Fatal Vision' Suit Ends in Mistrial," pp. 12, 14; January 29, 1989, Anne Rice, "A Murder that Didn't Add Up," p. A9; March 29, 1989, Wayne King, "It's Not Us, Tom River Says of Portrayal in Book," review of Blind Faith, p. B1; July 27, 1993, Michiko Kakutani, "Fiction? Nonfiction? And Why Doesn't Anybody Care?," review of The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy, pp. B1, C13.

New York Times Book Review, October 5, 1969, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 6; April 30, 1972, review of The Dream Team, p. 34; April 18, 1976, review of Heroes, p. 8; September 14, 1980, Paul Theroux, review of Going to Extremes, p. 1; September 25, 1983, Joan Barthel, review of Fatal Vision, p. 12.

Policy Review, October-November, 1999, Andea di Ro-bilant, review of The Miracle of Castel di Sangro.

Progressive, November, 1993, Nat Hentoff, review of The Last Brother, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, April 27, 1984, William Goldstein, "In The Forbidden City McGinnis Will Detail Life in Los Alamos, 1942–1946," p. 69; October 18, 1991, review of Cruel Doubt, p. 40; August 6, 2003, John F. Baker, "McGinnis to the Races," p. 14; May 31, 2004, review of The Big Horse, p. 64.

Saturday Review, September, 1980, Joshua Gilder, review of Going to Extremes, p. 80.

Spectator, March 14, 1970, review of The Selling of the President, 1968, p. 343.

Time, September 26, 1983, J.D. Reed, review of Fatal Vision, p. 72.

Times Literary Supplement, May 25, 1973, review of The Dream Team, p. 575; August 17, 1984, review of Fatal Vision, p. 915.

Village Voice, September 20, 1983, review of Fatal Vision, p. 45.

Washington Post, October 20, 1983, Stephanie Mansfield, "Three Murders and a 'Vision': Joe McGinniss's Verdict on the MacDonald Killings," p. D1.