Why Another Kennedy Book?

Abstract

Why another Kennedy book? Robert Dallek asks in the opening line of An Unfinished Life. As he well knows, much has been published on Kennedy since 1991, including books by Thomas Reeves, James Giglio, Irving Bernstein, Nigel Hamilton, Richard Reeves, Seymour Hersh, and Geoffrey Perret, most of which benefited from the abundant primary sources at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston. Dallek, a renowned biographer of Lyndon B. Johnson and authority on the modern presidency, justifies his study largely on the availability of new material, including written contemporary documents, telephone and Oval Office tapes, . . . and oral histories (p. ix). No source has proven to be more significant than the Kennedy medical records. Additionally, he has incorporated recent specialized studies on the Kennedy presidency. As a consequence, Dallek has produced both a bestseller and the most comprehensive study of JFK's life since Herbert Parmet's two volumes more than twenty years ago.1 Dallek seeks to understand Kennedy by placing him in the context of his time, class, family circumstances, and physical and emotional difficulties. His parents' impact on young Kennedy was enormous. Besides his considerable assistance, Joe Kennedy preached to Jack-and his siblings-that winning was everything. By example he also revealed that women were sexual objects. Rose, JFK's mother, following the conventional wisdom of the time, emphasized discipline over affection in child rearing. She was often inaccessible to Jack in adolescence, a time when he most needed her. Consequently, he felt unloved as a teenager. Her excessive religiosity, sanctimoniousness, and toleration of her husband's infidelity contributed further to Jack's unflattering perception of women. Not only did he match his father's womanizing, but he also found it difficult to show genuine affection toward the opposite sex. Out of that stressful family environment, which included a favored, robust older brother, the physically slight and extraordinarily bright young Kennedy expressed his rebelliousness by being sloppy, tardy, and irreverent. Only after