After his father's death and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Manchester likewise enlisted in the Marine Corps.

He served in the Battle of Okinawa, was severely wounded on June 5, 1945, and was promoted to sergeant[5] in July and awarded the Purple Heart.

The biography, published in 1951, profiles Mencken, the self-described "conservative anarchist" who made his mark as a writer, editor, and political pundit in the 1920s.

In this memoir, Manchester used personal anecdotes from his service on Okinawa in his descriptions of battles on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan.

[10] Manchester also wrote of World War II in several other books, including a three-part biography, The Last Lion, of Winston Churchill.

The suit was settled in 1967, reportedly with Manchester's agreeing to drop certain passages dealing with details of Kennedy's family life.

[12][13] In response satirist Paul Krassner published a piece entitled "The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book", which imagined scandalous censored material.

Manchester was initially reluctant to collaborate with anyone to finish the work,[6] but in October 2003, he asked Paul Reid, a friend and writer for The Palm Beach Post, to complete the Churchill biography.

In an interview conducted with a writer who was preparing capsule biographies of NEH medal recipients, Manchester stated that he had been valedictorian of his class at the University of Massachusetts and that he had received the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts; however, a 2017 article in the intellectual review The American Spectator asserted that none of this was true.

[16] Manchester married Julia Brown Marshall on March 27, 1948, known as Judy, and they had one son, music composer John[17] and two daughters, Julie, and Laurie.