Joe McGinniss dies aged 71

Joe McGinniss, author of the books The Selling of the President and Fatal Vision, has died at age 71, his friend and lawyer announced on Monday.

McGinniss died of complications from prostate cancer at UMass Memorial medical centre in Worcester, Massachusetts, Dennis Holahan said in an email.

McGinniss, who had been a Philadelphia newspaper columnist, gained national attention with the 1969 publication of The Selling of the President. The bestseller gave a behind-the-scenes account of how advertising and media professionals packaged the Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in his successful 1968 campaign for the White House.

For his 1983 book Fatal Vision McGinniss gained unlimited access to former Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald and his lawyers during MacDonald’s 1979 murder trial in the deaths of his pregnant wife and two daughters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

McGinniss is also the author of the 2011 book The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin about the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. He wrote a dozen books in all. In 2013 he announced he had advanced prostate cancer.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/