Everyone knows John Frankenheimer's controversial 1962 film starring Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury, even though it was taken out of circulation for twenty-five years after JFK's assassination and everyone will see Jonathan Demme's 2004 remake starring Denzel Washington and produced by Scott Rudin (The Hours), but these days too few have read the best-selling novel on which the movie was based.

Originally published in 1959, The Manchurian Candidate is a terrifying political thriller featuring Sergeant Raymond Shaw, ex-prisoner of war, Medal of Honor winner, American hero . . . and brainwashed political assassin. Writing in 2002, Greil Marcus called the novel 'An unusual kind of success... It was simultaneously a best-seller and a cult book, casual reading for the public and the subject of hushed conversations among sophisticates: could this really happen?... The story would lodge in the nations psyche and stay there.'