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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading, but definitively not a great book, June 8, 2002
By A Customer
Geoffrey Perret presents a new look at the life of America's most beloved president; it is also "the first craddle to grave biography" of this intricate personality. While the book is worth reading for those who are looking for a single volume biography of Jack Kennedy, it is definitivley not the definitive life of JFK nor a top work of scholarship. It reads more like a big volume of Biography Magazine or any news weekly than a well written, well researched piece. It will entretain and you will learn something --the history parts are very good-, but it will not earn a place in history as Gilbert's or Jenkins biography of Churchill will do. Nevertheless you should read this book. It is an easy read, very entretaining and revealing. Jack's sex-adiction, amazing ambition, relation to his imposing father, sense of destiny, will be exposed before your eyes. It makes you wonder about where character in our leaders went since then.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An above average effort by Geoffrey Perret., November 19, 2001
If you've never read Perret's books, you should know that he is simply a literary recycler. In other words, there is rarely anything new in his books, and in some past books, most notably his book on Ulysses Grant, there are some glaring errors that any author/historian and editor would be ashamed of. This book is, however, a good read. In fact, while there's little that is new, there are pages here that are just as good as anything in a JFK biography. There's a grace to some of the writing in this book. Sometimes I found myself cringing at some of his sources (Seymour Hersh's book comes to mind), but for the most part it's assembled well. Despite the number of JFK books out there, there are few one volume titles out there. This might be a good place to start if that's what you're seeking.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Gripping, but Flawed Account of a Great Man, November 21, 2001
The picture on the cover of this book pretty much conveys the portrait of John F. Kennedy contained within; and for this reason, I couldn't put it down. In fact, I really wonder if it is possible to write a boring book about JFK. This is a man who loved life and lived it to the hilt; and to his credit, Perrot has succeeded in conveying this. It would have been helpful, however, if the book were not marred by misstatements of fact. Two stand out in my mind. In one part of the book, we are told that the Kennedys held a grudge against Lyndon Johnson because he had helped spread the rumor of JFK's Addison's disease atteh Democratic convention in 1956. Yet in another part of the book, Perrot gives the date (correctly) as 1960. In truth, in 1956 LBJ was announcing Texas' votes for JFK in the balloting for vice president, hailing him as the "fighting sailor who bears the scars of battle." This is a far cry from rumor-mongering, which LBJ did indeed engage in in 1960, when he was a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. The most egregious error, however, is that Perrot has the Connallys sitting FACING the Kennedys in the limousine on that fateful day in November 1963, when it seemed that the world stood still and began shedding tears which continue to fall. When I read this, my first reaction was one of incredulity. For the images of that day are etched in the minds of so many people, including those like myself who, though living, were not old enough to remember JFK first-hand, that I cannot fathom how anyone who has seen the Zapruder film or the photos from that horrible event could get such a mundane fact so wrong. It's the little things like this that make you wonder. That being said, I would still recommend this book for someone who wants an idea of what it was like to have a man in the White House who, for all his faults and all his flaws, still managed...and manages still...to summon forth the very best of the country that he served so well.
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