DALLEK - An unfinished life: john f. kennedy, 1917-1963

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Copyright 2003, 2013 by Robert Dallek

Cover 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

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Second ebook edition: October 2013

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ISBN 978-0-759-52828-4

A compelling biography. Kennedys charm can still work its magic, even on a level-headed historian like Mr. Dallek.

Jonathan Karl, Wall Street Journal

An impressively judicious and balanced account of John F. Kennedys life and presidency. An excellent biography.

David J. Garrow, New York Times

Armed with a slew of new material from the Kennedy archivesmost notably, the presidents medical recordsDallek paints a vast and lavish portrait of JFK as a flawed but heroic man, a man driven into politics by necessity who had all the benefits of wealth but still faced incredible obstacles. The details of Kennedys early life are well known, but Dallek renders them fresh here with a brisk, uncluttered narrative style.

John Freeman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Robert Dallek is a master of the biographical craft. In this balanced account he recalibrates the Kennedy myth.

Ken Bode, Boston Globe

In this riveting tour de force, Robert Dallek delivers what will most assuredly become the benchmark JFK biography for this generation. Dallek is to be thanked for providing the thoroughly researched, well-sourced, responsible, and readable biography that has for so long been wanting in Kennedy scholarship.

Publishers Weekly

There is, indeed, a need for a solid, lucidly written, thoroughly researched biography like this one. The mythologies surrounding Kennedy always need to be challenged fairly and honestly, as Robert Dallek does in this book.

Myron Marty, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Robert Dallek delivers a remarkable cradle-to-grave account of JFKthe best ever penned. Although Dallek finds much to admire in JFK, he does not fail to depict the mans contradictions. The Kennedy revealed here is both idealistic and fatalistic, ambitious yet self-destructive, blessed but doomed. Such is the eloquent and complex burden carried within An Unfinished LifeRobert Dalleks extraordinary rendering of the brave, brilliant, but ultimately also incomplete JFK.

Edward J. Renehan Jr., Providence Journal

With a scholars instinct and a teachers cadence, Dallek found both tantalizing disclosures about JFKs personal life and a more measured assessment of presidential legacy.

Susan Page, USA Today

That Dallek has no ax to grind or myth to explode gives his portrait, after all these years, a certain stability and completeness, and, therefore, with all the contradictions, a likeness to life. Like any good biographer, Dallek has grasped Jungs thought that only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.

Lance Morrow, Time

Dalleks portrait is engaging and sympathetic, showing JFK as heroic in the face of suffering, and is the best of this years crop.

Andrew Cohen, Toronto Globe & Mail

Scholars and the wider public alike will appreciate Dalleks vivid portrait of John Kennedy and the engrossing history he has written of Kennedys presidency.

Allen J. Matusow, Washington Post

Dallek weaves a groundbreaking analysis of Kennedys medical history with a sweeping explication of policy, the Cuban missile crisis, and Robert Kennedys ascent to attorney general. Most intriguing, though, is the deftly rendered cult of vigor that sprang up in the shadows of JFKs illness and became his enduring, phantasmagoric legacy. Alongside pain, subterfuge, and impossible vigor, Dallek reveals in the Kennedy clan a recklessness that astonishes, even after a half-centurys well-trodden literary ground.

Christina McCarroll, Christian Science Monitor

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To Len and Myra Dinnerstein, Larry Levine, and Dick Weissforty-seven years of fond memoriesand to Jeff Kelmanmy instructor in medicine

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.

William Butler Yeats

Why another Kennedy book? I was asked repeatedly during the five years I worked on this biography. The availability of new materialswritten contemporary documents, telephone and Oval Office tapes, and entire oral histories or parts thereofseemed ample reason to revisit Kennedys personal and public lives. I also took guidance from science writer Jacob Bronowski: Ask an impertinent question and you are on your way to a pertinent answer. As I worked my way through the records, I was startled by how many fresh things could be said based on the combination of old and new files about the man, his family, and his political career. To cite just a few examples, new documents reveal more clearly the cause of the accident that killed Joseph Kennedy Jr. in World War II, how Bobby Kennedy became attorney general in 1960, and what JFK thought of U.S. military chiefs, their plans for an invasion of Cuba, the American press corps in Saigon, and the wisdom of an expanded war in Vietnam.