An American Melodrama (1969)

The whole of 1968, from Johnson's exit to Nixon Three British journalists who covered the campaign for a London paper produced the most complete single account of the year that broke American politics: Johnson stepping aside, the primaries, the murder of Robert Kennedy, the chaos in Chicago and, more briefly, Richard Nixon's narrow win at the end, all in one narrative. Being outsiders helps. They explain the machinery of primaries and conventions that American writers took for granted, which makes this the best place to understand how a nomination was won before the modern primary system. It is long and dense, and older copies are the usual way to find it.