Kennedy biography best

I spent the past 24 weeks reading a dozen biographies of John F. Kennedy totaling just under 8,000 pages: six “conventional” biographies, a two-volume series and four narrowly-focused studies of Kennedy’s presidency.

In the end, JFK proved to be everything I hoped for – and more! Like several of the presidents who preceded him, Kennedy’s life is a biographer’s dream.

His forebears were dynamic, endlessly fascinating, occasionally unscrupulous and, from time to time, oddly dysfunctional. Kennedy himself proved to be no less interesting: he was medically infirm, an ardent bookworm, a serial philanderer, often ruthlessly pragmatic and extremely charismatic.

But after spending five-and-a-half months with JFK and experiencing his presidency nine times (three of the books did not cover his time in the Oval Office) I still find Kennedy undeservedly well-ranked by historians. But that’s a subject for another day.

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* “An Unfinished Life: JFK 1917-1963” by Robert Dallek (published 2003) – This comprehensive biography was the first book on JFK that I read. It also proved to be my favorite. Dallek provides a devastating early indictment of JFK’s personal behavior, but more than half of the book is reserved for Kennedy’s presidency where his personal affairs take a back seat to the nation’s issues. Overall, Dallek’s biography provides the best combination of insight, balance and color of any of the JFK biographies I encountered — 4¼ stars (Full review here)

* “JFK: Reckless Youth” by Nigel Hamilton (1992) – This was intended to be the first book in a three-volume series but as a result of his “unflattering” portrayal of the Kennedy family Hamilton lost access to important research documents and, regrettably, abandoned the series. This lively 800-page narrative is riveting and provides unparalleled insight in

Rightly or wrongly, John F. Kennedy is the president who I’ve long suspected of being most undeservedly well-ranked by presidential popularity polls.

Of the 34 presidents I’ve completed so far Woodrow Wilson seems the most generously-rated…but I’m looking forward to learning whether there is real substance behind Kennedy’s charming smile and confident swagger.

My trip through JFK’s best biographies is poised to consume twenty weeks: twelve books and about 8,000 pages including four more-or-less conventional biographies, a two-volume series, a biography of his early life and five relatively narrowly-focused books (on his presidency, his character, or his famous family lineage).

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I’m beginning with Robert Dallek’s “An Unfinished Life: JFK 1917-1963” published in 2003. This is not only the most popular comprehensive biography of Kennedy, but also promises new revelations (at least as of its publication date) about his health, his family and his personal life.

Next I’m reading “John F. Kennedy: A Biography” by Michael O’Brien. Published in 2005, this is the most recent of the “conventional” biographies of JFK on my list. A full decade in the making, it seems well-liked but not particularly well-read. Does 905 pages look that scary?

My third biography will be Geoffrey Perret’s 2001 “Jack: A Life Like No Other.” Perret is the author of a terrific Grant biography I read in 2014…and a satisfactory biography of Eisenhower I finished about two months ago. This book’s claim-to-fame seems to be that it was the first Kennedy biography based on unsealed government documents, interviews and taped conversations.

I wrap up the “conventional” single-volume biographies of JFK with Ted Sorensen’s “Kennedy: The Classic Biography.” Published in 1965, this book was au

Although 40,000 books have been published about the Kennedys, according to the estimate of Jill Abramson, there are few serious efforts, prior to yours, to take comprehensive look at the life and times of JFK, America’s famous 35th president.

There are many books, as you say, that deal with aspects of his presidency and his family. But we don’t have a lot of full-fledged biographies of JFK himself, ones that contextualize his life and give due attention to his formative years. I don’t know that I have a good explanation for why. But it did cause me to think that there was an opening here. I had written about Kennedy before in different contexts, mostly pertaining to the Cold War and to Vietnam. Given that the materials available at the Kennedy Library and elsewhere are so rich, I thought I was in a good position to fill the lack of a real life-and-times biography.

Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, your 2012 history of America’s involvement in Vietnam, won both the Pulitzer and Frances Parkman prize. Is writing about Vietnam what led you to JFK?

To a degree, yes. Coincidentally, I opened Embers of War with writing about JFK, when he visited China in 1951. I also wrote about Kennedy before, in other articles and other books, and have taught about the Kennedy years in my classes. So, I was already familiar with and interested in him and his era.

Tell me about JFK, the man—and your book about him, the first volume of your planned two-part biography, which I asked you to discuss as one among the five books you’ve named.

Kennedy is certainly an iconic figure of the 20th century; he is also a highly consequential figure, I would argue, especially in American history, but indeed international history. His lifespan, which is 1917 to 1963, was an extraordinary period in world history and US history.

Hence the reason this became a two-volume work. In volume one, I cover his life through 1956, wh