11/22/63 theories, ultimately coming to the conclusion that Oswald acted alone. King met with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, an assistant to Lyndon B. Johnson and the author of books about several presidents, and used some of her ideas of worst-case political scenarios that might occur in the absence of Kennedy's assassination. The trade hardcover edition features a dust jacket that is a faux newspaper front page, with the front of the jacket featuring an article recounting the real historical event of Kennedy's assassination, and the back featuring an alternative history article speaking of the event as just a failed assassination "attempt"
11/22/63 of 2011. Legendary Texas musician Doug Sahm is portrayed as a young man playing with his band at the wedding reception for Deke and Mimi in 1961. The reviews for "11/22/63" have been generally positive, with "The New York Times" selecting the novel as one of its top five fiction books of the year and the "Las Vegas Review-Journal" calling "11/22/63" King's "best novel in more than a decade". The review aggregate site Metacritic judged 30 out of 36 reviews as positive, with four mixed and two negative. NPR book critic Alan Cheuse found no fault with the structure, commenting: