Customer Reviews

Kennedy

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Sorensen's account deals briefly with Kennedy's background, and then dives deeper into his campaign and years in office. I used the book as research for a paper on the Bay of Pigs and found that Sorensen's analysis is concise yet thorough. His reliance on Kennedy's speeches and on the progression of the drafts (many that he wrote or co-wrote) provides a very interesting picture of the incident and the man that I couldn't find elsewhere.

A very good background, reference, or research piece from insider Ted Sorensen.

Although Sorenson's book might have taken a beating since Camelot's golden days, it remains an invaluable classic for those interested in Presidential biographies. Sorenson doccuments what he felt made Kennedy a leader....and what ultimately impacted us when he was assasinated.

Written by John F. Kennedy's longtime aide, Ted Sorensen. An insider's view of one of the greatest American presidents. A reminder of Kennedy's leadership in areas such as: civil rights, environmental rights, consumer rights, Peace Corps, and space exploration. Half a century ago Kennedy warned against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and he took the first serious step toward arms control by ratifying the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It has been 47 years since the death of President Kennedy, but his legacy lives. When JFK was president, I was very young and did not live in the United States. So, it was interesting to read about the 1960 presidential campaign climate: the difficulties Kennedy faced running as a Roman Catholic and the very narrow margin by which he won the election.
Sorensen"s book is 758 pages long and exhaustive. I recommend it for anyone who has serious interest in John F. Kennedy, the man and the political climate in late "50s and early 60's.

After watching the three Presidential debates between Kerry and Bush, its interesting to go back and read this book by Ted Sorensen, a valuable aide and friend of President Kennedy. To be able to compare the world we now live in as represented by President Bush and JFK wannabe John kerry, and the way the world used to be in the time of the real JFK is remarkable. Maybe there was a secret agreement between politicians and the media on reporting events and styles, but it seems that todays world of immediate desire for news and analysis compared to President Kennedys administration of realism and understanding goes a long way to explain why politicians today are viewed in a lesser light. After President Kennedys death, we were faced with Vietnam, Watergate, malaise, an actor in the White House, Bush, an intern in the White House, 9/11, Iraq and Bush. Like that famous politician Yogi Berra once said, "Its Deja Vu All Over Again".

First off, this book is well researched and a good read until you get to the "World Leader" part of the book. Even though that is the part that talks about the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is sketched out beforehand. By the time I got to the "World Leader" part of the book, I felt like it was a chore to read; something that had to be done! I highly recomend Robert Dallek's "An Unfinished Life" instead of this one because Dallek's book flows at a much faster pace and is easily the best JFK book out there!

As I finished this book, I read Maureen Dowd's column, in which she allowed Aaron Sorkin to write a dialogue between Jed Bartlett and Barak Obama. During this dialogue (in which Bartlett urges Obama to 'get mad'), Bartlett has to tell Obama that he, Bartlett, is a fictious character. It is difficult to list the number of depressing attributes of this column, an opinion writer relying on a screenwriter to use a TV character to give a real, though ethereal, presidential candidate advice about tactics. It seems to me there so many people turned off by Bushworld ( the reality, not the book), that they take refuge in a nostalgia neverland, which has shades of Camelot and JFK.

I think that Sorenson - JFK's speecwriter and advisor, is in the same trap as Sorkin/Dowd. I did not know of this book - unlike "A thousand day's" - before I read 'Counsellor', Sorensons 2008 book. I bought Kennedy, written in 1965, hoping to get a glimpse of what made Kennedy such an inspirational leader. It is however, a hagiography, - take his view on Vietnam "in a sense, Eisenhower, Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Diem all helped to shape Kennedy's choices in Vietnam". Oh dear, the problems were very difficult; at least Shlesinger's view was that Vietnam was Kennedy's greatest failure. Sorenson's book suffers from too much deference to be credible.
What does recommend it are the insight it gives into America in 1960 - the public's perceptions/fears of Kennedy's religion, the overall economic fear projected about rising population and increased automation. Both seem incomprehensible now. I did know something about Dixiecrats, and so Nixon's Southern strategy really doesn't seem like more than an outworking of the obvious, once Civil Rights became an explicit Democratic party principle; I think JFK can take credit for this, even if he took to this platform cautiously. I did not know about Kennedy's tax cut and the confrontation with US Steel.
There is a lot to be gained by reading the book, in particular it seems to me to be good primer on Presidential decision making - ask all the questions, role play the possible outcomes, above all apply restraint. But the book is too close to the subject to be in any way objective, and is marred by its lack of objectivity.
It does seem to me that Kennedy was inspirational in his speeches and his actions, in the main, were well-judged and effective. But the presence of one does not imply the other, and we are in danger today, of mistaking Obama's elequence with effectiveness. He has to earn it, the scary part, as with Kennedy, is that a lot of the earning will have to be done on the job.