This is probably the strongest one volume Kennedy biography I've read. It covers his Presidential and Pre-Presidential life warts and all. It acknowledges that he was just hitting his stride when he died and that the real tragedy is that we never got to see how his presidency would have played out. I'm also amused that he was one of our sickliest President's (Not the sickliest, that honor belongs to FDR) and that people still think of him as so young and healthy. I personally think Kennedy wouldn't have passed the civil rights legislation that Johnson passed in his name BUT I'm positive that Kennedy would have handled Vietnam infinitely better.

genuinely a fantastic book.. i liked it a lot. i only wish that there was more about his personal life while he was in the white house, ie more details about his affairs, especially with mary pinchot meyer.. but overall i REALLY enjoyed this and i would recommend it.

I would give this small volume less stars for lack of depth, however this was somewhat the point of the book: to give a very brief overview of only that which is necessary.

I'll be interested to read the extended, original version.

This is a good biography that brought new insight into JFK from the severity of his health issues to his reckless "womanizing." It offers a more balanced view of JFK by identifying both his strengths and weaknesses.

(Note: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book. 3 = Very good; 4 = Outstanding {only about 5% of the books I read merit this}; 5 = All time favorites {one of these may come along every 400-500 books})

The first question any writer who proposes to write yet another biography of John F. Kennedy is "why bother"? Why spend several years researching and writing yet another book about one of the most well-chronicled lives in history?

Mr. Dallek addresses this question head-on in the preface to book. Unfortunately, his answer - that recently released documents shed new light on several relatively minor episodes in Kennedy's life - is less than satisfactory.

What follows is a 711-page tome which, despite its length, fails to truly enlighten the reader about Kennedy's character and actions. Many important aspects of the story - the grasping and sometimes illegal business deals of Joseph P. Kennedy (JFK's father) which propelled his family to wealth and prominence, Kennedy's lifelong medical problems and the stoicism they helped him to develop; JFK's complicated relationships with his father and older brother; the immense privileges and demands that came with being born a Kennedy and how those factors affected Kennedy's character; the unprecedented public relations/political organization which Joseph Kennedy put together to get his sons elected to high office; the questionable deals with the Chicago mob and others which helped to ensure Kennedy's election to the Presidency; the "Camelot" phemenon and the hoopla that surrounded it; Kennedy's callowness in managing foreign affairs, which first led to the Bay of Pigs disaster, then enabled Nikita Khruschev to bully him in their first meeting, and ultimately encouraged Khruschev to overplay his hand by putting nuclear-armed missiles into Cuba and caused Kennedy to overreact and bring the world to the brink of nuclear war in response (though there apparently were back-channel negotations going on all along which helped to defuse the crisis; and Kennedy essential conservatism and understanding of the importance of the supply side of the economic equation, in which he was ahead of his time - all are covere better elsewhere or completely overlooked in this book. When the narrative reaches Kennedy's Presidency, the story devolves to a discussion of differing views on the major issues of the day, with little or no consideration of the overall arc of events.

A couple of random points that caught my attention:

Throughout Kennedy's time in high public office, European leaders pressed the United States to base medium-range missiles in Europe for fear that if the Soviet Union invaded America might not be willing to risk a strike on its homeland by using longer-range missiles to defend Europe. By the time the late 1970s rolled around, the press almost uniformly portrayed installation of intermediate-range missiles as senseless warmongering. However, that opinion arose only under the defensive shield provided by those same "warmongers." The value of strong national defense tends to be denigrated when the voters feel safe, but is recognized more readily when the threat seems closer. In reality, however, it always exists to some extent.

Also, in the Epilogue Mr. Dallek notes that if Kennedy's many physical maladies had been disclosed to the public, he probably would not have been elected President. Writing in 2003, Mr. Dallek goes on to state that due to the trust that is placed in the President over nuclear codes and the proverbial launch button, it no longer would be acceptable to allow an invalid, such as Woodrow Wilson after he suffered his debilitating stroke in 1919, to remain as President, or even to accept a President with much more limited medical issues such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who suffered a heart attack while in office. Due to this concern, it has been commonplace for at least 50 years for Presidents to release regular statements by their personal physicians certifying their fitness for office.

That all changed in 2020, when Joseph Biden took office despite a relatively advanced case of dementia. Biden broke with the long-standing tradition of the President releasing his doctor's statement; one may infer that the reason was because he could not get a doctor to certify his is fit for office when that obviously is not so. Most of the press seems more interested in covering up this problem rather than unearthing the true extent of President Biden's limitations. However, the concern noted by Mr. Dallek remains as relevant today as it was in 2003, or, for that matter, in Kennedy's day.

On the whole, An Unfinished Life is a competent life of our 35th President, but nothing more. Three stars.

Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. - James Ellroy, American Tabloid

Mitigating circumstances: This is the ninth among my presidential bio(ish) reads over the past month and change. I’ve been concurrently reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which is an amazing book about an amazing president. As a result, I'm not really sure that this qualifies as a "book review" per se.

Having accounted for said circumstances, let me just say that I’m seriously underwhelmed when it comes to JFK. The book itself was well-researched and even-handed. In fact, I’m no Kennedy expert, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the NYT was right in assessing An Unfinished Life as the best single-volume Kennedy biography. I’m just not all that impressed when it comes to Jack Kennedy the man, especially given all the hoopla around him. Maybe I’m not giving him sufficient credit given that he was only in office for 1,000 days, but the word overrated definitely comes to mind. (See also: James Ellroy’s take in American Tabloid.)

Assorted bitchings and/or moanings:

We get it - being president makes you sick! Nixon, Eisenhower, Ford and JFK bios all go on about how “behind the scenes” doctors were juicing our heads of state to get them through their respective terms in office. It’s pretty much safe to assume from here on out that every POTUS is using PEDs (Presidential Enhancing Drugs). That being said, the whole Addison’s Disease thing is pretty interesting and Dallek would be doing a disservice to the reading public were he to skip out on the trials and tribulations of keeping the JFK machine up and in service. It also turns out that Dallek got unprecedented access to Kennedy's medical files, so I guess that's kind of a big deal.

I’d take things a step further re. James Ellroy's Bill Clinton comparison. With Clinton we all have our suspicions, but most people can only count on one hand the names of women who he took to the Lincoln bedroom (or whatever bedroom, or the oval office - you get my point). If the press can give a list of ladies with whom you’ve gone for a roll in the hay that stretches from here to Hanoi, you’re not Clinton-esque, you’re a veritable poonhound. I don’t particularly count this against Kennedy, I'm just saying that he could have given Carlos Danger a run for his money.


Not Dallek’s fault but definitely true:
There are few events in modern American history that get more air time than JFK's assassination. There’s this overwhelming sense that the good times would have rolled in ways we can’t even comprehend had Kennedy not taken that fateful trip to Dallas. I’m no timespace continuum wizard, so I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing that Kennedy would have had some disappointments up his sleeve along with a trick of two he may have turned. I didn’t come away from this book disliking the guy, but I can't help but feel that he's kind of overhyped. And yeah, I am holding him up next to Lincoln which might not be fair, but (as Dallek points out) the American public consistently rated him above Lincoln in their polls of greatest presidents, so the comparison bears mentioning. Guess what American public? You’re wrong. I can’t even tell you how wrong. You know what? Go read Team of Rivals. Right now! Then, when you’re done and have realized how awesome Lincoln was you can think about what you’ve done. Then, if you want to read a good biography about JFK, you should probably check this book out.

Surprisingly, biographies of John F. Kennedy seem rare and hard to find. There are a lot of books out there strictly about his presidency, even more about the Kennedy family and legacy, and there’s probably enough books on Kennedy’s assassination to fill a warehouse (pun not intended), but there doesn’t seem to be many actual biographies of his entire life. Being a modern reader, my search usually goes no further than Amazon, and if a book is out-of-print or significantly old, I tend to pass. It’s also more appealing to me if a volume is available in electronic format. Something about reading a 900-page book on an e-tablet is much less intimidating than heaving around a 10-lb hardback book.

This book was a welcome find and a highly satisfying read. The author balances the life of his subject matter adequately. The bulk of the volume deals with his (approximate) 1,000-day tenure as president with a fair amount dealing with his life up until he’s elected Commander in Chief. We read a lot about his upbringing and famous family, yet there’s very little in this book about Jackie and his own children. One gets the impression that Camelot was less than ideal on the actual home front. Sure, Jackie was the most glamorous First Lady in history, yet one concludes that their marriage was less than ideal. I’m sure it doesn’t help when the husband behaves like a tomcat with a testosterone problem. It’s well documented that Kennedy couldn’t keep his hands off the multitude of attractive women that he regularly met during his life. Fortunately, these incidents are not discussed in length either. Author Robert Dallek does firmly admit that Kennedy had a problem in this area, and we read snippets throughout, but the book doesn’t get burdened with the sordid details as it could have easily done.

When we read of Kennedy’s aristocratic spoiled upbringing, it’s very easy to dislike the man right away. It’s also much easier to outright hate his snob of a father, Joe Kennedy. A wealthy man obsessed with power, it’s clear to see that Joe’s priorities are not in alignment with what makes a happy, stable family. Joe Kennedy couldn’t give a rip about happiness. He’s all about power and raises his children with a fierce competitive spirit. He indirectly makes it known to his children that being second-best at anything is never acceptable. When eldest son Joe Jr. is killed in World War II, his father is much more upset that his political plans for the future have been upturned than the fact that he’s actually lost a son forever. When sister Rosemary clearly displays a learning disability and becomes more unstable as she grows into adulthood, Joe chooses to lobotomize his ‘embarrassment’ of a child and she’s sent off to an institution to wilt away far from the eyes of the curious public.

With Joe Jr. now gone, Joe Sr. expects second son John (‘Jack’) to fill in his brother’s shoes and fulfill daddy’s rapacious quest to climb the ladder of politics as high, and as quickly as possible. Jack serves one term as a congressman in the House of Representatives, quickly gets elected Senator four years later, and is elected to President in 1960 at the unheard-of age of only 42. Throughout these campaigns, we clearly see that Jack could have never made it without Daddy’s money nor influence. This is a game to Joe Sr. and Joe Sr. doesn’t play games to have fun. Of course, it’s also incredibly helpful to Jack that he’s charming, good looking and comes from a famous family. Yes, Kennedy’s quick ascension is mostly due to style and not substance.

Fortunately, JFK is a quick learner and is quite an expert in foreign affairs for such a young man. Although wealthy, his papa always expected Jack to always be learning, and Jack is someone who CAN handle a job such as President of the U.S. We do read, though, that his first year as president is quite rough. Being a fastidious learner, though, allows Kennedy to quickly learn from his mistakes, and by the end of 1962, he has a much firmer grip on the world around him and what must be done.

It also helps that Kennedy understands the political game. Every decision he makes requires him to think beyond the morality of the decision. He has to be mindful of what Congress thinks, what the fickle public will think, and most importantly, if his decisions will help or harm him when he runs for reelection in 1964. Hindsight views such assessments as shallow. Consider the Civil Rights issues and the plight of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to bring justice to the African-American population across the nation, particularly in the Jim Crow South. Kennedy knows he should do more for African-Americans and is rightly judged with malice by black leaders for not doing enough, but Kennedy knows he must tread carefully. If he alienates his white-southern base, he won’t be reelected in 1964. If he’s not reelected, he won’t be able to do anything for Civil Rights. As harsh as this sounds, history shows that, sadly, JFK was right when he chose to balance on the precipice. One only look at the presidency of Jimmy Carter to see that neglecting to play the ‘political’ game will put you out of favor quickly in Washington, and you can kiss your chances of re-election goodbye. One can’t serve their constituents if they have no constituents.

All the major elements of Kennedy’s presidency are discussed in this biography. In addition to Civil Rights, there’s Vietnam, the Vienna Summit with Khrushchev, Berlin, and lots and lots of Cuba. The major events get plenty of page space within this book, and this is a good thing. When domestic issues are brought to the forefront such as inflation, the gold standard, battles with the U.S. Steel moguls, and unemployment, it’s very easy to yawn and scan the pages. Fortunately, author Dallek realizes this and doesn’t devote as much attention to these issues as he does ‘the good stuff’.

The one area in this book that I thought Dallek could have improved on, was the issue of Kennedy’s perpetual illnesses. Kennedy was a very sick man with a host of maladies in his younger days, and we read about them ad nauseum. At times, I felt like I was reading a medical journal. For some reason, the author tends to go into too much detail around Kennedy’s symptoms, treatments, recoveries, and invasive medical procedures. At times it was quite gross. True, Kennedy was very ill, but I felt the author could have communicated this point to his readers without all the deep detail.

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed the most about this book is that author Robert Dallek handles his subject matter with no bias; neither good nor bad. Like many people, he doesn’t fawn nor drool over Kennedy’s ‘legacy’ (this was a big problem with the Ted Sorenson account of JFK’s presidency. Sorenson’s devotion was quite sickening. I felt Sorenson would have drank Kennedy’s bath water had he been asked). In fact, the epilogue of this book (2013 edition), the author attains that Kennedy probably shouldn’t be awarded the accolades that are commonly attributed to him. His conclusion is that Kennedy was a president who bordered somewhere between “very good” and “great”, yet he‘s a far cry from being one of the ‘best presidents ever’ which is how many opinion polls tend to rate him. Dallek’s conclusion is that when a young, charming, good looking president gets gunned downed by an assassin’s bullet, the public can tend to let their emotions dictate a biased evaluation of the subject matter.

This is exactly the conclusion I arrived at before I read Dallek’s epilogue. Kennedy truly rose to the presidency because of his looks, his money, and his family, yet he was very smart, and learned quickly on the job. Image is important for a politician. Whether or not it should be, history shows us time and time again that it is. Kennedy used his for his advantage, and in most cases, made the U.S. and the world a better place.

When I want to read a biography about a POTUS I like to refer to a great website https://bestpresidentialbios.com/curr... that I found a couple years ago. The creator of the website has read a ridiculous amount a presidential biographies and rated them all which is a fantastic resource for picking a book.

An Unfinished Life was one of the highest rated biographies for JFK and it didn't disappoint.

It starts with a pretty detailed description of how Joe Kennedy built his fortune which he would use to help JFK get his start in politics.

The money certainly opened doors for the future president from getting him into Harvard, paying for the campaigns and even buying a major newspaper in Massachusetts to help guarantee favorable coverage.

Regardless of what you think of JFK it is beyond dispute that his life and especially his Presidency was remarkable.

I thought Dallek did a great job of moving from one major issue to the next from the Cold War, Nuclear Threat, Bay of Pigs, Berlin, Vietnam and Race Relations/Civil Rights among other things.

Usually a book like this has highs and lows but I honestly never thought the book dragged. By far my favorite thing was how Dallek was able to show how the issues were tied together. We couldn't just attack Cuba with putting Berlin at risk and obviously how most of the international issues were affected by the concern of nuclear war.

I honestly can't say if Dallek was more a fan or critic of JFK because he is so even handed.

If I had negative and this is very slight, I would have preferred a little more attention to the assassination and all it entailed.

Looking up online about which of the roughly million books about JFK is the best this one seems to be the winner, especially if you are interested in finding a great big one volume biography about his life.

I don't know if my rating is fair. That's what this review will be about. Trying to be objective the book feels stilted. For about the first third of the book we get the per-presidency years. We see JFK as a kid, as college student, the PT-109 captain, the senator. We are there as doctors shove endless things up his ass trying to figure out what is behind his constant medical problems. We are there for this long relationship with a married journalist. Then he becomes president and all of the 'personal' parts disappear and the second two thirds of the book read like a repetitive list of issues and problems his brief administration had to deal with.

Yes, the parts about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis have some narrative to them, and so do some of his dealings with Khrushchev, but it's mostly like being stuck in a loop the major issues he dealt with, and then repeating it, because it's a loop and when he doesn't deal adequately with say Civil Rights in 1961, it returns in 1962 and 1963 to be dealt with inadequately again. This is interspersed with comments about Kennedy's fucking lots of women, and even more infrequently any mention of Jackie, and maybe one reference that he even had kids while in the White House. The narrative choice is weird and awkward, much like this shitty review.

I can see where the author doesn't want to delve into the much written about scandalous parts of JFK's life, but the person pretty much disappears in the second two thirds of the book, except that he really likes calling political enemies pricks and sons of bitches. We do see him as a smart and thoughtful president, but, well I don't know what I meant to say, it just feels kind of blah (I mean not to be too much of a nitpicker, but the word Camelot doesn't show up until the end of the book when the author is looking at how Jackie handled the death, and the entire planning of the fateful trip to Texas till three bullets were fired at him was dealt with in about 3 minutes of listening time, and I'm not quite sure how the author wrote against the popular idea of their being a conspiracy after saying that LBJ told people he asked to be on the Warren Commission that he didn't want a Soviet or Cuban connection to be found, which sounds like lets just stick with the magic bullet and impossible feat of a lone gunman getting off three shots with a single bolt action rifle on a moving target in that short of time).

I feel like I might be a little unfair though.

I've been on this project since the start of of 2023 to make my way through a biography of each president. My original idea was I was going to listen to a great big book on each president, and didn't think through that here might not be an audio version of say a John Tyler biography, or that there might not be a big and well written non-academic book on say Andrew Johnson. Or many of the other presidents that held the office between Andrew Jackson and Lincoln. So I ended up listening to what I could and using a series edited by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to fill in the gaps.

And because of this there were a couple of presidents that I knew I'd have to do multi-volume works. Like I couldn't not real the Edmund Morris Teddy Roosevelt series, and it would probably be a travesty to not read the four volumes by Robert Caro on LBJ, but I didn't trust that the LBJ books would be as good as some people say they are. I kind of felt like the people I've usually seen raving about the books aren't people who I necessarily think of has having read a lot, and it might just be the pride of having slogged through thousands of pages to make them pot-committed in their enjoyment.

So with my cynicism about how good Caro might be, I opted to listen to the first two volumes in the LBJ series, covering the years up until he becomes Senator first, before getting to JFK. I figured if they were kind of a bore at least I'd break up the LBJ story a bit, and honestly I knew that JFK wasn't coming on to the scene yet during the events of the first two Caro books.

But.

The Caro books are so fucking good. My only criticism so far is that too much in the second volume was lifted verbatim from the first volume, but it is so in depth and well written. He can turn describing the dealings that went into building a dam in rural Texas, an event that I shouldn't care about one way or the other, in to a really engaging story. At least the first two Caro books are some of the best books I've read (well listened to) in this project. I wouldn't say the best, the Chernow books on Washington and Grant are possibly just as good.

I'm gushing on Caro and Chernow because picking up this book after reading two of the LBJ books might be making this book seem less substantial than it really is. And I've noticed that there is such a wide gap between the great biographers I've read and the rest, even when they seem to be praised for their skill (McCullough and Morris fall in to the great category, too, but not quite as great).

Being born in the decade after Kennedy was shot, I grew up with the idea that JFK was a great president. And this book slightly dispelled that notion. JFK was a flawed human being, who I think might have been one of the smartest and most well meaning presidents we ever had, but his term was short and he barely passed any real legislation, didn't have much support from his own party that was divided sharply between a Northern Liberal wing and a Segregationist Southern wing, he didn't seem to grasp how to deal with Congress, he had big ideas that he hoped would get passed in 1964 ahead of the election, and its possible if he had lived he might have kept us out of a total escalation in Vietnam, maybe the words credibility gap might have never been uttered and the way American's look at the presidency after LBJ and Nixon might have more respect, and maybe there wouldn't be the dumb polarization that the country is going through now that kind of results from the cynicism that came after the 60's. And maybe unicorns would exist now and grant us wishes and puppies and kittens would never grow up to die. Maybe all of these things if Kennedy had lived, or maybe things would ultimately be exactly like they are. Who knows. But I got the feeling after reading this book that the love for the JFK presidency is based more on the hopes of what could have been than on what he was actually able to accomplish in his thousand days or so that he served.

Now back to Caro and LBJ III

The bio of a lifetime.

I've never entirely bought the line that JFK was one of the all-time great American presidents, but this book has at least convinced me that he would have been had he been re-elected rather than assassinated.

Nevertheless, I'd be willing to bet that this is about as comprehensive a biography of Kennedy that exists, and would recommend it for that alone, but Dallek's prose, while highly readable and clear, seems to me to be missing what the English call a certain I don't know what. It's not dry so much as flat, and he never seems to quite probe as deep as a really good biographer should. Thankfully Kennedy's own words are very liberally quoted which are a nice contrast with the, uh, actual text. Well worth a read if you're interested in JFK, especially if you're not all too familiar with the man and the time period I think, but don't expect Caro.

A detailed, even-handed account of the Kennedy presidency with an emphasis on the inner workings of U.S. international relations and the extent and severity of Kennedy’s physical ailments. Five stars for content; minus 3/4 of a star because of Dallek’s dry writing style.