Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years [Hardcover]

David Talbot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2007

For decades, books about John or Robert Kennedy have woven either a shimmering tale of Camelot gallantry or a tawdry story of runaway ambition and reckless personal behaviour. But the real story of the Kennedys in the 1960s has long been submerged - until now. In Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, David Talbot sheds a dramatic new light on the tumultuous inner life of the Kennedy presidency and its stunning aftermath. Talbot, the founder of Salon.com, has written a gripping political history that is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. Brothers begins on the shattering afternoon of November 22, 1963, as a grief-stricken Robert Kennedy urgently demands answers about the assassination of his brother. Bobby's suspicions immediately focus on the nest of CIA spies, gangsters, and Cuban exiles that had long been plotting a violent regime change in Cuba. The Kennedys had struggled to control this swamp of anti-Castro intrigue based in southern Florida, but with little success. Brothers then shifts back in time, revealing the shadowy conflicts that tore apart the Kennedy administration, pitting the young president and his even younger brother against their own national security apparatus. The Kennedy brothers and a small circle of their most trusted advisors - men like Theodore Sorensen, Robert McNamara, and Kenneth O'Donnell, who were so close the Kennedys regarded them as family - repeatedly thwarted Washington's warrior caste. These hard-line generals and spymasters were hell-bent on a showdown with the Communist foe - in Berlin, Laos, Vietnam, and especially Cuba. But the Kennedys continually frustrated their militaristic ambitions, pushing instead for a peaceful resolution to the Cold War. The tensions within the Kennedy administration were heading for an explosive climax, when a burst of gunfire in a sunny Dallas plaza terminated John F. Kennedy's presidency. Based on interviews with more than 150 people - including many of the Kennedys' aging 'band of brothers', whose testimony here might be their final word on this epic political story - as well as newly released government documents, Brothers reveals the compelling, untold story of the Kennedy years, including JFK's heroic efforts to keep the country out of a cataclysmic war and Bobby Kennedy's secret quest to solve his beloved brother's murder. Bobby's subterranean search was a dangerous one and led, in part, to his own quest for power in 1968, in a passion-filled campaign that ended with his own murder. As Talbot reveals here, RFK might have been the victim of the same plotters he suspected of killing his brother. This is historical storytelling at its riveting best - meticulously researched and movingly told. Brothers is a sprawling narrative about the clash of powerful men and the darker side of the Cold War - a tale of tragic grandeur that is certain to change our understanding of the relentlessly fascinating Kennedy saga.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Those looking for new insight into John F. Kennedy's presidency will want to read this meticulously researched chronicle. Talbot, the journalist-founder of online newsmagazine Salon, sticks to the facts, starting with a timeline of then-attorney general Bobby Kennedy's actions on Nov. 22, 1963, the day his brother, the president, was killed. Immediately suspicious of the CIA, the Mafia and the Cuban exiles they're involved with, Bobby made it his mission to expose this "shadowy nexus"; much of the book concerns the Kennedy brothers' relationships with members of those factions as they dig for the truth. Talbot profiles friends and enemies, taking readers into JFK's strained work with Pentagon officials who famously pressured him to take a chance on the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Later chapters deal with the aftermath of JFK's, and then RFK's, assassinations, and the final chapter contains Talbot's incisive conclusions on those momentous years. Talbot's only weakness is in covering too much-with more than 150 original interviews, Talbot is forced to move too quickly from event to event, making his numerous characters hard to keep straight. Still, it's an admirable feat of reporting, and one that will spark conversation among conspiracy theorists, historians and others who lived through the Kennedy era.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Although the literature about the assassination of John F. Kennedy could fill a decent-sized library, Talbot, founder of salon.com, proves there's always more to say. His book purports to reveal new information (based on interviews with more than 150 insiders and experts) about the Kennedy presidency, but its real appeal is its casting of Bobby Kennedy as "America's first assassination conspiracy theorist." According to Talbot, from the moment he heard about his brother's murder, Bobby believed it was the culmination of an elaborate plot involving Cuban exiles, organized crime, and elements of the CIA, and he never stopped trying to expose the plotters. By focusing on Bobby's quest for justice, Talbot avoids most of the pitfalls of the who-killed-Kennedy books. Rather than asking us to believe a conspiracy theory, he simply asks us to understand what Bobby believed and why he believed it. The book also explores Bobby's own political career and makes a good case that he was murdered by the same people who killed JFK. A persuasively written, substantive addition to the Kennedy collection. Pitt, David

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (May 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743269187
• ISBN-13: 978-0743269186
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #176,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( K ) > Kennedy, Robert
  • #56 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( K ) > Kennedy, John F.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Problems with the CIA, FBI, and Military . . . and a Call for an Unlimited Inquiry into the JFK Assassination, June 4, 2007

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Hardcover)

If you think you know all there is to know about the Kennedy presidency, you will learn more than you expect from reading the new material in Brothers. If you don't think you know enough yet to satisfy you, Brothers is a must read.

The title of the book is a little misleading. Brothers is really focused on RFK and a few of his most loyal lieutenants. The lieutenants were so close to the Kennedys that they felt like and were treated like brothers.

As time passes, historical events become clearer. But if you wait too long to render judgment, you lose the testimony of those who participated in the events. Brothers is unusual in that sense: It adds the views from 150 new interviews, but unavoidably loses some perspective as many witnesses are no longer available and many important documents remain classified.

Here are some of the new perspectives Brothers brought to my attention:

1. JFK wasn't really in control of the CIA and military while he was president. The CIA was off running anti-Castro operations in violation of direct presidential orders. The Bay of Pigs invasion was planned by the CIA from the beginning as a ploy to trigger an American military invasion of Cuba which the Joint Chiefs supported.

2. Some in the Pentagon were pushing for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in 1961.

3. JFK and RFK had so little confidence in the Secret Service that they were planning to put presidential protection under the attorney general's office.

4. The Cuban missile crisis was more dangerous than I believed. The Soviets had many more troops than the CIA believed and those troops were equipped with tactical nuclear weapons and permission to use them against an American invasion of Cuba.

5. JFK planned to withdraw from Vietnam after the 1964 election.

6. RFK began his own private investigation of JFK's assassination and concluded that he needed to dismantle the CIA if elected in 1968.

7. Those who were in the best position to judge in Dallas thought that there was more than one gunman.

8. Some of those with RFK in Los Angeles thought that there was more than one gunman there.

9. A group of CIA dirty tricksters were present in both Dallas and Los Angeles when the assassinations occurred. You are left to draw the inference that the CIA assassinated JFK and RFK, but there's no direct evidence to sustain the point.

I found that the book tended to try to cover too much ground. As a result, any particular set of evidence was covered quite quickly. In light of the many books that have been written on these subjects, it would have been useful to address those books and try to straighten out incorrect viewpoints from at least the most influential of those books. For example, the cases for and against multiple gunmen in Dallas and Los Angeles receive relatively little attention, even though much has been written on this subject.

Ultimately, the book raises a fundamental point: We have experienced some national tragedies beginning in 1963 which include these assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Isn't it time that we made it a priority to understand what happened and what went wrong, so we can avoid repeating the mistakes? If we let sleeping dogs lie, they may awake and bite us again.

90 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and important book, June 2, 2007

By 

Richard E. Hourula (Berkeley, CA. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Hardcover)

In the end author David Talbot is unable to produce either a smoking gun or solid proof of exactly who killed John F. Kennedy. To be fair, such a book seems impossible given all the classified information pertaining to the case that are still under lock and key. But what Talbot does is view the JFK presidency and assassination through the eyes of his brother and attorney general, Robert Kennedy. Talbot also manages to offset some of the fashionable anti-Kennedy revisionist history that has been in recent vogue, framing JFK as a crusader who challenged the military-industrial complex and CIA hawkish world views.
Indeed it is the very challenge, that call for moderated and peaceful solutions to the Cold War that Talbot strongly suggests was at the heart of his murder. Talbot details the brothers' refusal to back the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, their refusal to go nuclear during the Cuban Missile Crisis (pun intended) and their desire to work amicably with the Soviet Union and to find a peaceful solution to the burgeoning disaster in Vietnam. All these views and efforts put them at odds with the the hard right wingers of the military and CIA and made them some very serious enemies.
As as a long-time student of the assassination I appreciated Talbot's refusal to bog himself down in dissecting that Warren report which has already been picked clean (it still has some supporters as does the belief that the Earth is flat). Talbot also didn't waste reader time tracking down every ridiculous lead on the assassination that has popped up these 40 plus years. Instead Talbot sticks to the principal players within the Kennedy administration, and what they knew and believed. Mostly he follows Robert Kennedy who was traumatized by his brother's death but had the courage, after initial struggles, to move on with his political life. Talbot convinces us that RFK would have solved the mystery of the assassination had he been elected president (can there be much doubt that his own assassination was to keep that quest from being successful?)
Talbot is clearly an unabashed fan of the Kennedy brothers and views them heroically. Moreover he'll win over skeptical readers. The author also sees an unmistakable CIA role in their murders. This too he is able to support with a preponderance of evidence both circumstantial and rock solid.
No, "Brothers" does not solve the case but at the very least it will keep hope alive that some day we may get some answers. Meanwhile readers will find their appreciation of the Kennedys rekindled.
"Brothers" is a smooth, fast read recommended for those interested in the assassination and the Kennedy years.

67 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A too timely book, May 25, 2007

By 

Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Hardcover)

Brothers chronicles how the children of elites attempted to take on the United States power structure from within the administrative branch--and who the enemies were, determined to bring them down.

Because several preceeding books have previously been written about the Kennedy brothers, readers might initially be skeptical about picking up David Talbot's work. I can affirmatively assure them that this one is a keeper for your personal library. It reads like a really good mystery book which you know just has to make it to the screen someday.

Talbot disperses some light-hearted trivia throughout his book (Jack was a forerunner of what would be known as 'metrosexual' because he would hold meetings in his underwear' and commented on the attractiveness of other men) but it is not a celebrity triva book. He provided the trivia to take readers into the complex psyches which constructed both men in eras when they were, frankly being immortalized as plastic and one-dimensional images.

A strength of Talbot's writing is that he is obviously an admirer of the Kennedy's. He gets a little too partisan at times, but comparatively appears less partisan than earlier books in the pro-Kennedy camp. Footnotes are provided at the back of the book for reference, so he's not just shooting off his mouth for the sake of it.

I was born well after the times referenced in this book, but the well-writen text took me to the places referenced and drew me in. I really understood the radical potential the Kennedy brothers had for transforming America and why the modern new right organized against them so fiercly.