In this groundbreaking biography, historian and journalist Burton Hersh combines a lifetime of research and reporting with a lively mixture of never-before-told anecdotes to create a broad yet unfailingly intimate portrait of the politician who would be universally acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s greatest American legislators.
Hersh had been acquainted with Kennedy since his college days, and the result here is a unique series of revelations that serve to reinterpret the senator’s public and private personas. Conditioned by deep-seated fears that he was an afterthought within his own powerful family, Kennedy developed a genius for conciliation and strategizing that made him a dramatically more effective Congressional operator than either of his older brothers.
Here finally is the definitive version of the incident at Chappaquiddick, the details of which Kennedy himself filled in for Hersh shortly after it occurred. The woman he telephoned that fateful night recently elucidated that vital exchange for the author. This book also delivers the first full report of the life-threatening vendetta between Kennedy and Richard Nixon, exposing the behind-the-scenes manipulations to which Kennedy resorted to drive Nixon from office during the Watergate scandal. Kennedy’s role is highlighted in ending the fighting in Viet Nam and averting a faceoff with the Soviets and an invasion of Nicaragua. The book details his battles with alcohol and drugs and aimless womanizing along with the series of plane crashes and family crises and personal scandals that tested the dedicated senator virtually until the day he died.
$28.80 Hardcover
$ 5.65 Paperback
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