"John F. Kennedy: A Life From Beginning to End," published by Hourly History, LTD, is advertised as a concise history of John Kennedy, meant to be read in an hour. The book lives up to the billing, as I was able to finish it within that time. This is a clever concept; and the book will be especially beneficial to younger readers who did not live through the tragic events of Kennedy’s life, but are interested in learning more about him. Even though it is a short biography, the book serves as a useful “primer” on John Kennedy, and covers all the major events of his life, including his upbringing in Hyannis Port, his heroic exploits in World War II, his early political ambitions, his courtship and marriage to socialite Jacqueline Bouvier, the 1960 presidential debates and election, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile crisis, and his assassination.
What makes the book valuable is that it does not attempt to “sugar-coat” the Kennedys, as many other biographies do. We are told of the ruthless ambition of his domineering, power-hungry father, Joseph Kennedy. The book covers Joseph Kennedy’s questionable “business operations” during the Depression, often characterized as “bootlegging,” that resulted in the Kennedy fortune; the early Kennedy alliance with Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Joseph Kennedy’s purported “pulling strings” to get his son elected.
We are also told of John Kennedy’s many infidelities and the toll they took on his marriage: his affair with a possible German spy, his dalliance with Marilyn Monroe, and his sharing a mistress with a known Mafia figure. These and other frailties are all covered without any attempt to gloss over them, and tend to humanize the man. Along with his major accomplishments in the area of civil rights, his vigorous leadership, and his youthful inspiration to the country, these are all part of the Kennedy story and need to be told in any meaningful biography.
The book also raises questions about how the country might have been different had John Kennedy lived. Would the Viet Nam war had a different course? Would we have had the tumult of the Sixties? Would race relations have evolved differently? We’ll never know, but these are all questions worth pondering. This book is well worth reading and I highly recommend it.
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