Neal Thompson - The First Kennedys: The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty

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NEAL THOMPSON is a journalist and the author of five highly acclaimed books, including A Curious Man, Driving with the Devil, and Kickflip Boys. A former newspaper reporter, he has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Esquire, Outside, Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, and Oprah.com. He lives in Seattle with his family.

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Here is that rare thing: an untold chapter in the Kennedy saga. Neal Thompson has given us a compelling and illuminating book about one of the most important families in our historya family that represents so much about America then. And now.

Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times best-selling author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

A fresh, engrossing, and profoundly relatable look at a family that everyone thinks they know. Crafting a saga elevated by dogged research and transporting prose, Neal Thompson casts the humble beginnings of an American dynasty into surprising and penetrating light. Unforgettable.

Denise Kiernan, New York Times best-selling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City

Here is the chaos, claustrophobia, tragedy, and triumph of immigrant America told through one city and one iconic family. Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about the Kennedys, along comes Neal Thompson with this brilliant re-creation of the Irish diaspora succeeding in a city that for many years would not allow them to be part of the American story. Its great storytelling.

Timothy Egan, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author of The Immortal Irishman

An illuminating look at the earliest years of the Kennedy family in America... Thompson is especially good at evoking the hardships [Bridget] Murphy endured and placing them in the context of the nineteenth-century Irish experience. The result is an engrossing, real-life rags-to-riches tale.

Publishers Weekly

I thought everything had been written about the Kennedy family, but Neal Thompson has proven me wrong. He has entered into the early years of the Kennedys and brought forth a stunning, intimate tale of the American family that fascinates us beyond all others.

Laurence Leamer, New York Times best-selling author of The Kennedy Women and The Kennedy Men

Neal Thompsons The First Kennedys is a riveting, beautifully written story and an important addition to our ongoing fascination with Americas royal family. With captivating prose and breathtaking research, Thompson takes us on a remarkable journey from the blight-infested potato fields of Ireland to the unwelcoming, hardscrabble wharves and disease-ridden tenements of 1840s East Boston, where Bridget Murphy and Patrick Kennedy arrived to stake a claim to a new life. They joined millions of Irish immigrants who were at once reviledwhite native-born Americans called them maggots, vicious, and wretchedbut who also provided the desperately needed cheap labor for an expanding nation. The real hero of the story is Bridgetstrong-willed, smart, and determinedwho survived widowhood and climbed her way out of certain poverty to become a successful businesswoman, passing on her remarkable gifts of tenacity and confidence to generations of Kennedys. Settle in for a fascinating read!

Kate Clifford Larson, New York Times best-selling author of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter

Neal Thompsons The First Kennedys is both a profound portrait of the immigrant experience and an intimate look at the origins of an American dynasty. Deeply researched, intricately layered, and written in sparkling prose, this is narrative history at its finest.

Karen Abbott, New York Times best-selling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park and Sin in the Second City

To understand the unforgettable stories of Jack and Bobby, Eunice, Ted, and the rest of their celebrated generation of Kennedys, we have to understand the stories of their extraordinary great-grandparents and grandparents. Now, thanks to Neal Thompson, we can. Read all about it in The First Kennedys .

Larry Tye, New York Times best-selling author of Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon

Bridget Kennedy, JFKs grandmother, achieved the American dream, but her story has been buried in patriarchal lore. No more. In this fascinating book, Neal Thompson gives Bridget her dueand in the process, makes us reconsider JFKs origin story.

Alexis Coe, historian and New York Times best-selling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington

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THE FIRST KENNEDYS. Copyright 2022 by Neal Thompson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Lines from Sea Change by Eavan Boland from A Woman Without a Country . Copyright 2014 by Eavan Boland. Used by permission of Carcanet Press and W. W. Norton & Company.

Excerpt from The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri. Copyright 2019 by Dina Nayeri. Used by permission of Canongate Books Ltd. through PLSclear and The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Catapult.

Cover design by Brian Moore

Cover photograph John F. Kennedy Library Foundation

Map () by David Lindroth

Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2022 ISBN: 978-0-358-43872-4

Version 01282022

Print ISBN: 9780-358437697 (hardcover)

ISBN 9780-358578383 (audiobook)

In memory of the strong Irish women

who raised and shaped me:

My grandmother, Della (ne Bridget)

My sister, Maura

My aunt, Patty

My mother, Pat

And to my wifealso strong, but ItalianMary

Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this...