A very strange thing happened in the American publishing world last autumn. As the summer ended Mr. Theodore White—that historian laureate of US presidential elections—produced his customary reverential account of the previous year's campaign [The Making of the President 1968].

Mr. White's book slowly and surely began its climb up the best-seller lists….

But then something very inconvenient occurred. A slim volume—with its title clearly an ironic crib from Mr. White's—suddenly made its appearance on those same shelves on which The Making of the President 1968 had previously been standing in isolated majestic splendour…. In the very first week in which it was published, The Selling of the President showed The Making of the President a clean pair of heels in the popularity stakes—and it has never looked back since….

Mr. McGinniss's book is primarily about the television and advertising men who worked on the...