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John F. Kennedy: A Biography
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Product Description
There are many specialized books on Kennedy's career, but no first-class modern biography--one that takes advantage of the huge volume of recent books and articles and new material released by the JFK library. Ten years in the making, this is a balanced and judicious profile that goes beyond the clash of interpretations and offers a fresh, nuanced perspective.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1115801 in Books
- Published on: 2005-03-01
- Released on: 2005-02-24
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 992 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Publicity for this book claims that until now there has been "no first-class modern biography that takes advantage of the huge volume of new material released from government archives and the JFK Library": somewhere there is a copywriter who missed Robert Dallek's magisterial and bestselling An Unfinished Life (2003), Dallek having been the first Kennedy biographer since Doris Kearns Goodwin to enjoy full, unrestricted access to all materials in the Kennedy Library. That being said, retired University of Wisconsin–Fox Valley history professor O'Brien (Vince: A Personal Biography of Vince Lombardi) offers a serviceable consideration of JFK that's as much a survey of the literature as it is a biography. The majority of O'Brien's footnotes refer to published sources, and this is reflected in O'Brien's prose. For example, his chapter on PT-109 is full of quotations from and allusions to the writings and conclusions of such authors as Robert Donovan, Joan and Clay Blair, and Nigel Hamilton. The estimates and guesstimates of these writers, plus others, are measured and compared, and then O'Brien sums up with his own analysis of JFK's adventure in the Pacific. One thousand pages of this makes for a singularly inclusive—though at times exhausting—summary of JFK scholarship past and present. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The prevailing feeling among many is that everything there is to know about John F. Kennedy is already known. Surely there have been so many books about his life--as a politician and as a man--that it's easy to feel overwhelmed. But O'Brien, taking advantage of new documentary material (including the recently archived correspondence of Joseph Kennedy and the papers of JFK's friend Le-Moyne Billings), has found a somewhat different focus on the familiar story and offers a balanced rejoinder to some of the harsher, revisionist biographies that have appeared in recent years. Fair and balanced doesn't always make for the most exciting of books, however, and in some places readers can see the scales being weighted to hang evenly. Still, O'Brien does yeoman's work pulling together material from various sources for this complete overview. The book favors providing reliable information about events over speculating on emotions or the effects of various relationships, but readers do see Kennedy evolve as a man and as a force in history. An up-to-date and substantial addition to the Kennedy shelves. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
- James N. Giglio, author of The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
"Professor Michael O'Brien has written a richly empathetic biography in which he faces square on the revisionist truths of the last decades and yet John F. Kennedy remains graced with the laurels of humanity."
- Laurence Leamer, bestselling author of Sons of Camelot
