Joe Mcginniss

Author William Manchester contends that writer Joe McGinniss plagiarized large portions of Manchester's book about President John F. Kennedy's assassination, The Death of a President, in McGinniss' own book about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, The Last Brother. Manchester, whose book set the literary measure for Kennedy scholars and aficionados 26 years ago, told the Washington Post that McGinniss "didn't do any work himself. " "I was astonished at the number of instances of copying and also the pattern" of similarity in McGinniss' prose, he said.

When Jonathan Yardley, the Washington Post's book critic, calls Joe McGinniss' new biography of Ted Kennedy the worst thing he's read in "nearly three decades," he's saying something. Yardley, like all reviewers, has read books so bad, so trashy, so without literary or journalistic merit, that to single out one as the worst means that it has a quality that sets it apart. In the case of the McGinness book, it's dishonesty. The Last Brother is really in a league of its own. It not only purports to know what Ted Kennedy was thinking at this or that moment, but it also has the speechless Joseph P. Kennedy, a stroke victim, impart his earnest desire to attend the Washington funeral of his son, the slain president: "He'd seen enough of Jack's casket on television, enough of Bobby's and Jacqueline's somber but resolute expressions.

Let me begin by making a confession that will set me apart from many of those who have commented on Joe McGinniss' latest work: I have actually read the book. I have read it and found it to be a finely written and insightful investigation, not only of Ted Kennedy, but of the way America creates and discards its heroes, of the way American politics works and of the role the media plays in those workings. Let me make a second confession: I am a friend of McGinniss'. As has been the case with a long list of other writers, I have benefited from his kindness and generosity in the form of jacket quotes, reading time, advice and recommendations.

"Wouldn't it be nice if it just dropped like a stone?" My friend offers this as a purely wistful thought. The "it" we are talking about is The Last Brother, the Joe McGinniss' book on Teddy Kennedy. We are both too well-versed in the ways of the marketplace to expect that a flap about fact, fiction and fairness will result in a debacle at the cash register. Quite the contrary. In the weeks since the book came into view, or at least preview, it's made more of a splash than a thud.

To begin with, the book never mentions Muhammad. But Blind Faith, the new best seller by Fatal Vision author Joe McGinniss, is seen here as a Jersey shore Satanic Verses. The book, the No. 2 best seller on the New York Times nonfiction list, recounts the scandalous 1984 murder of a local housewife, and scorches this "lost world of exurbia" and some of its most prominent inhabitants. The murder of Maria Marshall was the most-talked-about killing here since a woodsman was slain by his wife's lover 103 years ago, according to town historian Pauline Miller.

When they wheel wife-murderer Robert O. Marshall into the Trenton State Prison death chamber and stick him with the needle that will fill his body with poison, his oldest son expects to still be waiting. Waiting for his dad to quit lying and admit he hired hitmen to kill his wife on the Garden State Parkway in 1984. If his father can confess, 24-year-old Roby Marshall figures, then maybe they can talk for the first time since 1986. And then Robert O. Marshall can die, like his son believes he deserves.

Rose DeWolf, an eternal optimist and a longtime columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and The Inquirer, died yesterday of bone cancer at Pennsylvania Hospital. She was 70 and lived in Center City. She was a graduate of West Philadelphia High School. From her student days at Temple University, where she wrote for the student newspaper as she earned her bachelor's degree, Ms. DeWolf never wanted to be anything but a journalist. "She liked the variety of subjects, the great breadth of things she could write about, and she was an outstanding researcher," said her husband, Bernard Ingster.

The Daily News has joined the mainstream media attack on Oliver Stone by comparing him to Joe McGinniss. Stone's film,"JFK," is in no way similar to McGinnis' undocumented soap operas. "JFK" contains a great deal of factual information. Stone and co-writer, Zachary Sklar, have published a book titled, "JFK the Documented Screenplay," which clearly separates the facts from the speculation. It lists 340 research notes and many public documents supporting much of the dialogue in the script.

The lawyer of convicted murderer Robert Marshall literally argued for her client's life yesterday, claiming he received shoddy representation in a murder trial that riveted the nation's attention nearly a decade ago. Marshall, convicted in March 1986 in the contract killing of his wife, Maria - his arrest, trial and death-sentence verdict prompted a best-seller and television movie - sat quietly while Joan Van Pelt, his state-appointed defense attorney,...

The Swarthmore Academy Knights went into their Christmas break after an important Tri-County Independent Schools league victory Tuesday against the Wyncote Academy Lions. The Knights (1-1, 5-4 overall) clobbered the Lions (0-2, 3-3) 87-63 in the game. And at least part of the reason rests in the stellar performances of key Swarthmore players. Joe McGinniss, who is a 5-foot, 11-inch sophomore forward, blasted 37 points through the net to pace the effort. Jim Roberts, a 5-11 senior forward, turned in an effort rich with balance.

Observations, insinuations, ruminations and unvarnished opinions . . .   FOUND MYSELF reminiscing about the good old National Basketball Association this week as season openers were officially scrubbed. It is more and more likely there will be no NBA basketball played in the 2011 portion of the 2011-12 season. Owners want a 50-50 split of the billions. Players want a 54-46 cut. Don't any of these guys read the Wall Street Journal ? You can understand how the lordly A's and bottom-feeding Phillies were able to coexist here for so many years before World War II. Baseball salaries were so low you could pay the help out of a cigar box containing the day's gate receipts.

I READ Ronnie Polaneczky's column about the book on Sarah Palin and was disgusted at the viciousness and hatred that poured from each sentence. Polaneczky starts by saying "look who just got interesting. " That a woman who ran for vice president, was a governor, and was a New York Times best-selling author, all while raising a family with a Down syndrome child, didn't get interesting to Polaneczky until nasty 25-year-old rumors come out about sex and drugs reveals a lot of ugliness in this writer.

The Rogue Searching for the Real Sarah Palin By Joe McGinniss Crown. 336 pp. $25 Reviewed by Michael Smerconish By now you've heard about a new book, The Rogue , concerning the behavior of a narcissistic public figure set in Alaska during the summer of 2010. What you wouldn't know until reading it is that the protagonist is its author, Joe McGinniss, not his purported subject, Sarah Palin. While the subtitle claims the work concerns "searching for the real Sarah Palin," it is instead the personal diary of an author trolling for rumor and innuendo while living directly next door to his subject for 3 1/2 months.

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin's husband on Thursday called a book critical of his family "disgusting lies, innuendo and smears" as the former Alaska governor's camp sought to discredit a racy biography that includes allegations of infidelity and drug use. As Sarah Palin weighs a White House bid, her husband released a statement seeking to blunt the fallout from Joe McGinniss' The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. Palin allies also released another denial from the man alleged to have carried on an affair with Sarah Palin.

HERE'S a timeline of some of the naughty bits found in the new book from former Inquirer columnist Joe McGinniss, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin , as first reported by the National Enquirer yesterday. * Palin smoked pot with a professor while attending Mat-Su College in Alaska, McGinniss reports. The professor was reportedly the father of one of Palin's friends. *  Palin, a cub TV sports reporter in Alaska, reportedly had a one-night stand with Glen Rice in 1987, then a junior at the University of Michigan and later an All-Star in the NBA. A friend told McGinniss that Palin had been the "aggressor" and "hauled his ass down.

WELL, LOOK who just got interesting! According to Joe McGinniss, author of the soon-to-be-released The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin , the former Alaskan governor, pit-bull hockey mom, vice-presidential candidate and tea-party darling was a wild thing back in the day. In book excerpts printed yesterday by the National Enquirer , McGinniss reveals details of Palin's past that some will find salacious but I find run-of-the-mill....

You've done your beach reading; now it's time to brush off the sand, go inside, and curl up in a cozy chair with some of fall's best offerings. Do love and marriage really go together like a horse and carriage? Pulitzer-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides takes a mordant look at matrimony in The Marriage Plot . A slew of other notable novelists weigh in with new work, too, including Haruki Murakami, Russell Banks, Amitav Ghosh, Don DeLillo, and Stephen King. On the nonfiction side, Mark Bowden, who chronicled a shooting war in Black Hawk Down , turns to cyber-conflict in Worm: The First Digital World War . Best-selling author Joe McGinniss tells us all about Sarah Palin in The Rogue , Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. leads us on a tour of African American history, Life Upon These Shores , and historian Ian Kershaw recounts the last days of the Third Reich in The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 . Autobiographies abound, with memoirs from luminaries including Riccardo Muti, Joan Didion, Carrie Fisher, Diane Keaton, Harry Belafonte, and Roger Ebert.

A baby is on the way for Alicia and Swizz Alicia Keys' tummy bump is a baby bump, her reps have confirmed. The transcendentally beatific R&B singer is expecting her first child. The papa is Swizz Beatz, a (non-Swiss) producer much prized for his work with Beyonc? and Jay-Z. Alicia and Swizz (Kasseem Dean) collaborated on the suggestive tune "Put It in a Love Song," from her new CD. "Swizz and I started that song, and it created this really fun feeling," Alicia told USA Today in December.

Alicia Keys ' tummy bump is a baby bump, her reps have confirmed. The transcendentally beatific R&B singer is expecting her first child. The papa is Swizz Beatz , a (non-Swiss) producer much prized for his work with Beyoncé and Jay-Z . Alicia and Swizz ( Kasseem Dean ) collaborated on the suggestive tune "Put It in a Love Song," from her new CD. "Swizz and I started that song, and it created this really fun feeling," Alicia told USA Today in December. The feeling was so powerful, the couple plan to wed later this year.

Philadelphia newspaper readers will never forget Steve Lopez. In a city of great newspaper columnists, of Pete Dexter and Joe McGinniss, Lopez left his own distinctive mark, skewering the town's most Rabelaisian characters for more than a decade, from 1986 to 1997. For Lopez, City Hall was the Big Top, inhabited by the likes of the Boom-Boom Sisters, as he dubbed Councilwomen Joan Krajewski and Ann Land, and where money was squandered on frills such as the Councilmobile, which he once comically commandeered, only to discover it could barely lurch a block without stalling.