John F. Kennedy

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	John F. Kennedy
	by Robert Dallek Sales Rank: 1025985	$12.97 At Amazon on 5-30-2008.

*Features* Cover Type: Paperback with 848 pages Published by: Penguin Books Ltd; New Ed edition July 1, 2004 ISBN 10 Number: 0141015357 ISBN 13 Number: 978-0141015354 Book Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.6 inches Weighs: 1.5 pounds *From Publishers Weekly* In this riveting tour de force, Boston University history professor Dallek (Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973) delivers what will most assuredly become the benchmark JFK biography for this generation. A master of the art of narrative history, Dallek is also the first biographer since Doris Kearns Goodwin to be granted unrestricted access to key Kennedy family papers (most importantly, the Joseph and Rose Kennedy Papers) in the JFK Library. This is a substantial and significant trove to which Dallek brings a refreshingly critical eye. He has also mined many nuggets of key information from the papers of JFK's colleagues, doctors and friends. Thus Dallek has significant new ground to break on a range of fronts including but not limited to Kennedy's health, politics, personal recklessness and love affairs. Dallek's revelations about JFK's health, based on previously unavailable medical files maintained by Kennedy's personal physician, have already received significant publicity from the Atlantic excerpt in December 2002. But here Dallek expands on that information and reveals (for the first time) the full extent of the medical coverup orchestrated by the Kennedy family: a coverup that involved the destruction of key medical records even after JFK was in his grave. On the political front, Dallek uses new inside information from a Kennedy associate to reveal the detailed mechanics (and enormous scope) of the use of Kennedy money to purchase the West Virginia primary in 1960. At the same time, Dallek has new evidence on both Jack's philandering and his recklessness. Example: During the same 1960 campaign on which his father spent millions, JFK risked it all by inviting an underage cheerleader to his hotel room. As is appropriate, close to two-thirds of this biography covers Kennedy's truncated presidency. In one of the book's most important sections, Dallek marshals new evidence that JFK did not view with favor the expansion of the war in Vietnam, and that he most likely would not have sanctioned such an expansion. Throughout the book, Dallek stops short of worshipping his subject. He is a Kennedy admirer, but he never allows this admiration to cloud either his focus or his truth telling. Dallek is to be thanked for providing the thoroughly researched, well-sourced, responsible and readable biography that has for so long been wanting in Kennedy scholarship. Illus. not seen by PW. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From The New Yorker It's hard to believe that someone could find anything new to say about John F. Kennedy, but Dallek succeeds in this riveting and well-documented biography. Despite plentiful revelations about Kennedy's private life, the book is very much a political biography, which keenly explores Kennedy's grasp of modern political campaigning. (The account of how the Kennedy machine managed the issue of his Catholicism in the 1960 West Virginia primary is particularly telling.) But he wasn't always sure what to do with power once he had it. His ideas on domestic policy were surprisingly conventional, and his foreign policy seems jingoistic. Kennedy, however, had the ability to change his mind—no small accomplishment for a President—and by the time he died he was a considerably more sophisticated leader. One need not accept Dallek's fanciful, if familiar, conclusion—that, had Kennedy lived, he might have pulled the United States out of Vietnam—to think that J.F.K.'s political career was a work in progress that was arrested too soon. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. *Reader Reviews* This review is from: An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (Hardcover) Having read Robert Dallek's two volume biography of LBJ, which, though comprehensive, pales in comparison with the stellar work in progress by Robert Caro, I approached this biography with enthusiasm, to be sure, but something less than highest expectations. I should not have worried. This is by far the best biogaphy of JFK that I have read; and I have read pretty much all of the ones worth reading (that leaves the Victor Laskys of the world out). Dallek is an academician by training: and his writing has sometimes suffered for this (this was my major problem with the LBJ volumes, which are otherwise excellent and which I highly recommend.) But he has captured, perfectly I think, the essential paradox that was at the core of JFK's personality. The only other JFK book that remotely apporaches this one is Nigel Hamilton's supurb JFK: RESTLESS YOUTH. It is a pity that the Kennedy family got so upset about the Hamilton work (because of its depiction of Rose); because any careful reader of Hamilton's book comes away with what Dallek makes explicit: that John F. Kennedy was truly a heroic man who struggled to overcome a plethora of illnesses and handicaps which would have left many other people in the dust, no matter how wealthy they happened to be. That JFK did not allow self-pity and a life of ease to overtake him is one of the psychologically triumphant stories of political history, and one which Dallek relates with informed expertise and sympathy. It is clear that Dallek admires Kennedy. I have no problems with this, as I do too. But he is no blind acolyte; and for this reason, his account is far more credible than those of Schlesinger and Sorenson, although these were admittingly penned in a time of intense grief for the recently murdered leader. Dallek takes Kennedy to task for a variety of things: from his intemperate and reckless pursuit of women to his hesitancy on civil rights. But his criticism of the Kennedy record is tempered with what I am convinced is an accurate sense of what was possible at the time. Dallek is at his best in making the case that JFK would not have done what Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam. Much is made of his skepticism of the military; but another reviewer -- I think it was in the Washington Post -- made the point that Dallek could have easily added that Kennedy's civilian advisors were also subject to his scrutiny, and that JFK did best, particularly in foreign affairs, when he trusted his own judgment on an issue. It is inconceivable to anyone reading the account herein of the Cuban Missile crisis that Kennedy could have blindly followed the advice of the Taylors and Westmorelands of the Vietnam conflict. To his credit, Dallek passes through the assassination quickly. I have always thought that Kennedy's life should eclipse the attention given his death, and this book makes that point in a subtle manner befitting its subject. This is, in short, an excellent book about a man who strove to excel, who was convinced that making the effort to be your best in a field of endeavor is the only way to live and be happy. I think that John F. Kennedy would be very happy with this book. Comment \| \| (Report this) Back To Top
John F. Kennedy Available from Amazon Price: $12.97 Updated on 5-30-2008.

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