The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power [Hardcover]

Lance Morrow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2005

In 1948, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon were all ambitious young congressmen at pivotal points in their lives. LBJ was in a desperate Senate race, running against a more popular candidate. Campaigning frantically by helicopter across Texas, LBJ won only with the help of corrupt political bosses, whose illegal ballot-stuffing put "Landslide Lyndon" into the Senate by 87 votes. At the same time, Nixon was having his first meetings with Whittaker Chambers, the witness in the Alger Hiss trial that would make Nixon a national figure and lead to his selection as Eisenhower's running mate four years later. And Kennedy was still recovering from the near-fatal attack of Addison's disease he had suffered the previous year. From that point on, he would conceal the truth about his health, just as he concealed his reckless personal life. In all three politicians, Morrow finds a streak of amorality and ruthlessness-each believed that the rules didn't apply to him. Lies of one kind or another-lies they told or exposed-would propel each of them to power; lies would also undo LBJ and Nixon's presidencies and, ultimately, tarnish JFK's reputation.Morrow also tells the story of America in 1948, when it, too, was learning the secrets of power, and coming to grips with the vast changes of the postwar world. For readers of Robert Caro and Robert Dallek, The Best Year of Their Lives offers a fresh look at a crucial turning point in the lives of three presidents, by one of America's most observant and thoughtful journalists.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Best Year of Their Lives is not a typical presidential biography in that it forgoes the comprehensive approach to history. Instead, Lance Morrow shows why 1948 was a watershed year not just for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon personally, but for the nation as well. That is the year that Johnson, in his bid for the Senate, used huge sums of corporate money to bombard the media with lies about his opponent, finally stealing the election by 87 votes by having a ballot box stuffed (thus earning the nickname "Landslide Lyndon"). Had he lost, he would have arguably been out of politics forever and the course of history would have been changed. At the same time, Nixon, as a freshman congressman, launched his political career by using his seat on the House Un-American Activities Committee to relentlessly pursue Alger Hiss, making himself a prominent national figure in the process. (Four years later he became Eisenhower's running mate.) Meanwhile, Kennedy was working hard to suppress the fact that he had Addison's disease. He continued to lie about his health for the rest of his life just as he later hid his reckless personal behavior. Through anecdotes and analysis (including personal contact; all three were presences in Morrow's childhood), Morrow shows how secrets and lies were to shape the behavior of all of them. This "convergence of personal ambition with secrecy, amorality, and a ruthless manipulation of the truth" would have tremendous implications for the country. The events of 1948 also foreshadow the tragedies and scandals that would end all three of their administrations.

Externally, the three presidents were radically different. Internally, argues Morrow, they were identical in many ways in that they "shared a tendency toward elaborately deliberated amorality; all three behaved as if rules were for others, not for them." Along with a rapidly changing American society, the start of the Cold War, and looming atomic destruction, 1948 ushered in modern politics and these men were the embodiment of it. Absorbing and unconventional, The Best Year of Their Lives adds to the considerable bodies of work already available on all three presidents. --Shawn Carkonen

From Publishers Weekly

Time essayist Morrow (Evil: An Investigation) does an excellent job of showcasing three future presidents as young congressmen standing at the seductive threshold of power. Morrow also depicts the sowing of the seeds of the corruption that thrives alongside authority and success. We see L.B.J., once a starry-eyed do-gooder, making Faustian bargains in order to bootstrap himself from the House of Representatives to the Senate (he won via stuffed ballot boxes, arranged in part by segregationists whose views he devoutly, but quietly, despised). We see J.F.K., on the mend from a near-fatal bout with Addison's disease, begin tying a knot of lies about his health and private life that would be unbound only after his death. And we see the equally young Richard Nixon commence his assignations with Whittaker Chambers, the former spy who would make Nixon's reputation by testifying against Alger Hiss. At the heart of Morrow's tale lurks that most potent yet dangerous tool of public and personal politics: deceit. This is the story of the birth and nurturing of cynicism in three future political giants: Morrow sees each man as a study in moral compromise and shows us how, starting in 1948, each continually and routinely--if sometimes sadly--sacrificed ethics before the altar of ambition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (March 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465047238
• ISBN-13: 978-0465047239
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,192,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Three titles in search of a story, September 9, 2005

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power (Hardcover)

I should have known better. The last book I read that had a title, subtitle, and sub-subtitle confused me and that seems to have happened again. Morrow offers three titles, labels, or come ons: "The best years of their lives," "Learning the secrets of power," and "Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon in 1948." I'm still not sure which one is the `real' title. The three concepts each had promise. These are three American icons, both loved and despised. The year - 1948 - happened to be a pivotal year, not just for these three, but also for the rest of America. The hot war was cold, and the cold was getting hot, and the Baby Boom was booming. Opportunity and optimism seemed unlimited, especially to young, power hungry politicians like Nixon, Johnson and Kennedy.

The disappointment I felt was that none of the promises implied in the three labels for the book earned much attention from the author. Morrow tells us more about Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss than Richard Nixon, about George Smathers and Joe Kennedy than Jack Kennedy, and Coke Stevenson and Lady Bird rather than Lyndon Johnson. If these three presidents of the future learned any secrets of power in 1948, the secrets remain undiscovered by me. Maybe I'm not reading well enough into the analysis. Morrow waxes poetic about eerie parallels in lives, like Lana Turner and Richard Nixon, notes the impact of all the dead, diseased and disturbed relatives and their effects on the three main characters, and offers an encyclopedia of armchair psychoanalysis and cultural sidebars, mixing religion, crucifixion complexes, politics, Hollywood, and Albert Kinsey. Theories, not secrets.

It is not even clear how -if at all - that 1948 was the best year of each man's life. The attempt to link these three lives to the Hollywood film reminded me that 1948 was the best year of "our" lives, so I guess all Americans had a pretty good year in 1948, especially war veterans. But Johnson was not much of a veteran (Johnson's Silver Star makes John Kerry's Purple Hearts look like Medals of Honor) and Kennedy, well Morrow acknowledges that the PT-109 story was more of a court martial offense than the makings of a heroic legend. Even Nixon was more of a Mr. Roberts than any battle-scarred veteran. These men had more to be embarrassed about than proud when it comes to war service, but politics makes legends out of molehills and Morrow provides us with three moles. Morrow's tangential summary description of the role, character and accomplishments of George Marshall makes these three men look like the three blind mice.

Reading on, looking for integration or even a consistent narrative, the pages slipped away, leaving me scratching my head. When a 300-page book has only four chapters, maybe that should have been a sign. The stories jump all around, often into Jack Kennedy's sex life and his coarse way of rationalizing his need for sex, and Morrow seems to obsess about dark secrets, homosexuality, suicide, drunkenness and bankruptcy. These may be secrets a lot of people would like to keep a secret, but they don't tell me anything about "the secrets of power."

Stephen Ambrose (Nixon), Thomas Reeves (Kennedy) and Robert Caro (Johnson) are much better chroniclers of the more complete, factual, historic versions of the lives of thee important figures, including 1948.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wouldn't want to sit with Morrow at a dinner party, July 25, 2005

By 

Snooze (Avon, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power (Hardcover)

As reading the other reviews shows you, Morrow's style is polarizing. His authoritative voice and pedantic vocabulary borders on pomposity in my opinion, and he has a curious obsession with not only movies but all 3 men's libido (or lack thereof). However, I can see how his bold approach appeals to some. In my mind the book compares unfavorably to Theodore White's In Search of History (White was in the middle of what he described and crafted a far more readable book.)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a Disappointment, December 20, 2005

By 

J. M. White (Little Rock, AR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power (Hardcover)

This book starts with a great premise -- three future Presidents at a common turning point in their lives, 1948. I bought this book thinking it was history. But I soon discovered that the occasional random historical nugget was buried among piles and piles of pretentious psychobabble, strained metaphors, obscure pop culture references, and delusions of literary grandeur. I'm not sure what's more bizarre -- the discussion of Nixon's sex life, or the pages and pages exploring the similarities between Nixon and Lana Turner.

A history of these three presidents in 1948 would make a great book. Maybe someday someone will actually write it.