In 1989 Reston published his first full length biography, The Lone Star: the Life of John Connally. An excerpt of the biography was published in a Time Magazine cover story on November 28, 1988 entitled "Who Was the Real Target in Dallas." Reston's 2013 work, "The Accidental Victim", extended the author's controversial argument that it was Texas Governor John Connally, not President John F. Kennedy who was Lee Harvey Oswald's intended target. In the books and in an earlier opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times (November 22, 2004) Reston also argued that President Kennedy would have survived Oswald's first bullet that passed through his neck, but the tight girdle the president wore to support his bad back held him upright in the presidential limousine for the assassin's fatal second shot.