Even though this is a solid biography of JFK there are parts of this book that are rather dry and drag. The first two hundred pages were especially hard going. Dallek seems to write quite a lot on Kennedy's medical conditions which he suffered from his teenage years until his death. It appears from Dallek's perception that JFK spent more time trying to hide his medical problems than his womanizing habits. There is some dispute as to his medical condition hindering his Presidential decisions but Dallek never touches on this in the book. The real meat and potatoes are the Presidential years. His powerful "Ask not....is given in great detail. The disastrous Bay of Pigs, the tension filled Cuban missile crisis are definitely JFK's finest hours as President. A serious drawback is the skimpy portion given to JFK's assassination, only four pages on one of the most famous moments in American history. Also, for fans of Jackie and the children, they are rarely mention. The author does mention Kennedy's womanizing affairs that seem to be something that was out of control. "He told Harold Macmillan during the Bermuda meeting in December 1961 that if he didn't have a woman every three days, he would have a terrible headache."(p.559) I wonder how this behavior would have held up in today's Presidential life? Of course this was relevant to the story but they are interesting to a point. Then they became tiresome and spoil the narrative of the story. I enjoy biographies and this book has its moments but there is a great deal of detailed stories that I found boring. I think the book would have worked much better as an overview of the Kennedy administration rather then a general biography. Oh well onto the next book.

Comprehensive, well-written study of JFK's life. Dallek takes into account his faults and portrays a human side of the national icon in a balanced, yet admiring fashion. His consultation of diverse sources makes the book a powerful source on Kennedy's life.

3.75

I appreciated the epilogue nicely summing things up, and the first 200 and last 200 pages were interesting (all the enemas...), but my goodness was the rest boring. Even the Bay of Pigs was boring, and that should have been fascinating.

To be fair, this was not a good choice for a relaxing cruise vacation, but I had a lot of time on my hands so figured it was at least good timing.

I’m too young (though not by much) to remember, real time, JFK’s assassination, but I’ve been all too aware of the whodunit debate that’s raged ever since his tragic and untimely death. That said, I really didn’t know very much about the man until I read this book. It’s a thoughtful and thoroughly researched piece of work that draws on the input of many people who served with Kennedy and tapes of White House conversations by virtue of a recording system instigated by JFK himself.

The son of a pushy father, born to a rich, political family, JFK’s elder brother, was always meant to be the one who made president. But, as everyone knows, the family has been cursed by early deaths, and JFK became the eldest surviving son following the wartime death of Joe junior. The book tracks his early life and shows how Jack Kennedy progressed through Congress and Senate positions to become President. Observations and accounts seem well balanced with reflections on the man’s failures and weaknesses as well as his strengths and successes. It amazed me to realise that during his scant 1000 days in power he was called upon to address some of the weightiest problems of the 20th century, notably Cuba (particularly the missile crisis that took us closer to planetary extinction than any other single event), the rise of Communism which led to the conflict in Vietnam and the resulting Cold War and the emerging unrest concerning civil rights. He also kick-started the space race, which ultimately brought about the historic 1969 moon landing.

Most surprising facts:

-The extent to which he struggled with poor health throughout pretty much his entire life, to the extent that records were hidden, to prevent his ability to serve at the highest level being challenged, and later destroyed.
-If he hadn’t worn a back brace (due to chronic back problems) that kept him erect in his seat, the fatal shot, which followed the hit to his neck, would have missed him.

Most significant achievements:

-Finding a resolution to the Cuban missile crisis – albeit a crisis he arguably spawned by benefit of his policies and actions as he attempted to remove Castro from power.
-Negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty with Khrushchev at a time many of his political enemies and the military leaders (and even some of his advisers!) were arguing against such an agreement.

Failings:

-He was a serial womaniser – to an extent, it seems unthinkable he’d have survived in modern political life. This might have left him open to claims that he was distracted from his job and inattentive to both local and international issues, but the author goes to some lengths to dispel this accusation.
-Despite his vocal support for the campaigners for civil rights, he failed to pass any significant legislation to address the core issues. In fact, his overall record in passing weighty legislation was poor.

There’s no doubt his family money and connections provided him with the opportunity to achieve such high office, but it’s also very clear that JFK was a very smart man, a war hero (if a somewhat lucky one) and above all a leader who was willing to be considered indecisive rather than make a mistake he’d later regret. This latter trait seemed to be born from his observations of decisions made by military leaders during his naval service (he always mistrusted this group thereafter) and his early misjudgements as President concerning Cuba and Vietnam. Nevertheless, it served him well in his later dealings vis-à-vis Castro and Khrushchev.

Despite his short service in the ‘hot seat’, in polls he’s regularly voted one of the most important Presidents ever to serve. This may be attributed to his achievements or his premature death or maybe it was his good looks, his (apparent) health and youthful vitality and his ability to connect with his audience in the new television age. Whatever the reason JFK’s star continues to shine.

One must wonder what there is that we don't already know about Kennedy. For me, this was an eye opener because I hadn't realized how ill the man was, not just during his presidency, but for his whole life. From early childhood until his death he was plagued like Job with constant pain and a host of diseases and injuries that it is mind-boggling that he was able to function, much less take the highest office in the country. He was in such bad shape that the Navy wouldn't take him until he had his father pull strings to get him in and once there, to get him into real action ( incredible when you consider other politicians pulling strings to stay out of active duty). During most of his life, despite all the family's wealth and connections, they were unable to cure, much less diagnose his illnesses, even though he was treated by the best of the best. They did eventually diagnose Addison's disease and specific back injuries, but he suffered terrible intestinal disorders as well. And yet everyone who met him was so impressed with his vitality, charm, and cheerfulness. He is said to have been a jokester with a great sense of humor and a very happy disposition. I think that the courage he had in dealing with his physical ailments and rising above his pain is truly inspirational.

I love a tedious biography and this met all of my requirements. It took me two months to read and I learned a lot. I never knew he was as sick as he was from an early age or the extent of his constant womanizing. I felt Jackie's pain. His father came across as a domineering ass and his mother as cold and distant. RFK was a pit bull. This was a very balanced biography and not a gossip, hatchet job. Very good read.

An excellent, balanced biography. Dallek's concluding assessment of Kennedy's presidency and legacy are particularly insightful.

I am probably one of the the few Americans who were alive on November 22, 1963 who can't remember where they were or what they were doing when they heard that John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been assassinated. I was eight years old, and my only recollection of the time was the eerily quiet procession of the casket through the streets of Washington DC, with the subdued voice of an NBC announcer giving a running description. Since then, my image of JFK was been colored by LIFE and LOOK magazines, and the generally accepted view by many Americans that he was our best president, that he was American royalty and that his presidency was a fairy tale likened to Camelot. Against this mystique surrounding JFK (at least from my uneducated perspective) it is difficult to imagine that I could be bored by a biography about him. Unfortunately, I found Dallek's prose style dull, though he has presented a tremendous amount of research. Dallek did organize the information in logical sections, though some of the chapters seemed interminably long. Granted, it is Spring and the frustrated farmer in me kept looking at weather reports, but only got COVID 19 updates that allowed the health worker in me to become distracted. I felt that Dallek at times machine-gunned facts and names in a rapid succession, leaving essentially only a bare-bones view of the man. For example, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy received only cursory mentions throughout the book, and she did not seem to play a very important role in his life (which with all of the suggestions of JFK's womanizing, perhaps she didn't). Marilyn Monroe also received scattered references. I am not sure why the press was so hands off with his rumored womanizing. Today, it would continually be headline news. There was very little mention of mafia dealings, though Dallek does imply that Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson considered Sam Giancana as the possible brains behind the assassination plot. I did the find the chapters that dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Viet Nam more engaging than the rest, but that is perhaps because they were more dynamic issues. And if you are looking for an answer to who killed JFK, you won't find it here, though Dallek provides a good synopsis in his epilogue of why such a mystique developed around the man.
This ends my review of the book, the balance of what I am writing is my synopsis so that I won't forget what I have read. Read on at your own risk!
To understand JFK, one really does have to understand the Kennedy family, headed by Joseph Kennedy, an Irish Bostonian who made his money in the stock market, who chaffed at not being considered one of the first families of Boston, and who perhaps envisioned himself as an American aristocrat. As such, he had a plan that his son Joseph, Jr would one day be president. Joe, Jr, was an athlete and Harvard Law School graduate, who seemed to have a charmed life. It was in Joe's shadow that JFK grew, a somewhat lack luster student, plagued by physical issues (a life-long struggle), and a playboy lifestyle (inherited from his father). World War II saw both brothers in action: Joe as a pilot and Jack as a naval officer. Both men served with distinction, JFK performing heroically to save his PT crew, in a feat of physical endurance that is further enhanced with an understanding of his own downplayed disabilities. When Joe Jr's plane is shot down, and he is killed, the mantle of his father's presidential hopes fell squarely on Jack's shoulders.
And so JFK begins his road to the presidency, smoothed undoubtedly by his own charm and by his father's money, not that Joe, Sr. bribed his way in, but rather that moneys were spent getting JFK's name out and staff was bankrolled to ease the way (although Dallek does infer that someone was "encouraged" to promote JFK's Profiles in Courage to win the Pulitzer Prize). JFK served as a representative and senator from the state of Massachusetts, with a lack-luster record in both houses. His goal was the presidency, and these offices were merely stepping stones, which with his quick succession from one to the other, failed to provide him with the skills that could have aided him in dealing with Congress as president. 1956 saw him losing the Democratic party's vice-presidential bid, a loss that actually turned out to be a win. Instead of being associated with a losing ticket on the 1956 ballot, he could unsullied be a presidential candidate in 1960. JFK predicted that the stakes were high for that election: he did not think that his own physical stamina would continue through a four or even eight year wait if the Republicans won. So the Kennedy family pulled out all of the stops. Tea parties by invitation by the Kennedy Clan throughout New England wooed the female vote and wooing Democratic Party bosses in other ways. Kennedy needed to overcome his inexperience (he had little and was young), his Catholicism (was WASPish America ready for a Catholic, never had been previously), and his health issues (which they masked with lots of medications and hid from the public through the use of multiple physicians). Jack felt that if he did not win the Democratic nomination on the first round, he would not get it at all. Bobby, Jack's younger brother, quit his legislative seat to head Jack's election bid. Surprisingly (or maybe not so, considering Joe's money and influence), Jack beats out experienced politicians (Johnson, Stevenson, Stymington) to become the youngest presidential nominee. The Nixon-Kennedy debates gave Americans a clear picture of their political choice: scowling ruthless Nixon or handsome charming Kennedy. JFK wins, though not by any great margin, but when you consider what he had to over come (inexperience, religion, and even his ties to his isolationist outspoken father), it was quite a win.
JFK's vision for the presidency was his foreign policy. It was his strength and his passion, and he probably realized from the beginning that even with a Democratic legislature, he never really learned its ins and outs. He inherits an Eisenhower-CIA plan to invade Cuba, a program he did not whole-heartedly embrace. But he and his advisors did not know what to do with all of the CIA-trained Cubans and were fearful that if they did not complete the mission, they would have to prevent leaks of the American plan to oust Castro. As a result, Kennedy weaken the plan, by significantly reducing American air power and leaving the Cuban ground soldiers to be slaughtered at the Bay of Pigs. This failure in foreign policy at the beginning of JFK's presidency dogged him for the rest of his days.
Actually having to negotiate with Krazy Nikita Khrushchev colored many of his actions. NK was blustering over Berlin, and Kennedy could not back down without incurring the wrath of Europe. The Joint Chiefs, armed now with nuclear warheads, were ready to drop H bombs anywhere there was conflict: Germany, Laos, Cuba, Vietnam. Kennedy was inexperienced and it never showed more than in the first 2 years. JFK was fighting communism; they had bombs; they were the first in space; they had, what they thought was the best government, and they had egotistical NK who might just drive the world to the brink of destruction.
It wasn't until Russia started placing offensive missiles in Cuba (which NK kept insisting were defensive only) that things started really heating up. Stevenson presented U2 photos of Cuban missile sites that were indisputable proof of Russians intentions. Toe to toe, missile nose to missile nose, JFK and NK played nuclear chicken, while the rest of world watched with bated breath. (me, I watched from under a school desk with regular air raid drills.) JFK finally learned not to listen to his war-mongering Chiefs of Staff or the assassination planning CIA and diplomatically faced down NK, aided by a failing Russian food production plan and a known inferiority of the Russian missile system. A Cuban embargo turned back Russian missiles and a backroom agreement to remove American missiles in Turkey began the thawing of the Cold War. (American had put missiles in Japan and Turkey, was that really any different that Russia putting missiles in Cuba?)
Vietnam was another issue altogether. Common sense, the recent history of the Korean War, and Vizzini's advice in the Princess Bride to "never get involved in a land war in Asia", went unheeded.
Ironically, Dallek wrote pages of the argument against JFK's advisers made against involvement in Vietnam about which he agreed only to have him as I turned the page, commit military support! I think in some ways, Kennedy was as fanatically focused in defeating communism as NK was in supporting it. The Vietnam conflict deteriorated with America's lack of confidence in Dien and Nhu (leaders of South Vietnam) and more and more soldiers were being killed, despite their "advisory role". By 1963, Kennedy realized that to win Vietnam would require lots of money and lots of soldiers, and was beginning to doubt that the ends justified the means. By late summer 1963, the Kennedy government was polarized over the issue, and JFK was in despair. The specter a a repeat of the Bay of Pigs was looming large. LBJ's attitude was, and I quote, "instead of playing cops and robbers, we should get on with winning the war". Truly illustrates one of the problems with LBJ stepping in to the presidential shoes left by JFK!
It is really a shame that JFK did not pursue more forcefully his dream of influencing the world with the positive aspects of freedom which was the basis of his Peace Corps. He instead kept being dragged down to a covert, conspiratorial method of overthrowing governments. Much of the world does not have a the history or social makeup to by hook, line, and sinker what we Americans had come to embraced over centuries. (The irony to me is that desegregation was still practiced in a large part of the home of the Free and the Brave.) We cannot paternalistidally plan the governments of small nations in the name of freedom though we keep trying!
Domestically, JFK struggled. It was not really his passion, and he never really did get a handle on how to get Congress to do his bidding. He had plans: Medicare, education, equal opportunity employment, but he could not force his will. This can be demonstrated with his approach to the Civil Rights issue. He personally was for desegregation and Civil Rights, but kept weighing his position against the effect that it would have on his re-election. He could not afford to overcome both the Republicans and the Southern Democrats as a group and kept trying to appease both segregationalists and desegregationalists. And for a while he failed to make either happy. He waffled promoting segregationist to the federal bench, waffled with the Freedom Fighters and with the Oxford Mississippi struggles. Had he listened to the advice of those who kept saying to make it a moral issue, he might have succeeded. It wasn't until he saw the absolute ruthlessness of Bull Connor in Birmingham Alabama and the courage of the African Americans making a stand ( and a bit fearful of the violence that would eventually propel the Black equality issue if not heeded soon), that he began to turn around. In the summer of 1963, he began to play a more forceful role in the issue.
The three shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald on that day in November 1963 will probably always be surrounded by mystery. Was he alone, like Guiteau who assassinated Garfield from an imagined poltical debt, shooting JFK because of a perceived poltical debt (communism, desegregation)? Was it Russia, Vietnam, Cuba hatching their own assassination plots against a man who at least listened to, but did not actually entertain assassination as a plausible solution to foreign problems? Was is organized crime? The Warren report was thorough, though LBJ did say to Warren that a proven assassination plot might lead the world to the brink of war and did that influence Warren and his team?
Kennedy's death did not mean a loss of the past, but a loss of the hope of the future. He was young, he was figuring out presidential leadership, and there was such a hope for the Civil Rights movement. And he is suddenly cut down in his prime. And the country mourned and the country imagined what might have been JFK: Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Cuban Missile Crisis, the space race and landing on the moon, missile ban treaty, Jackie and his family.

Having just returned from a trip that took me to the excellent JFK Presidential Library in Boston and the JFK museum in Hyannis, I am pretty much JFKed out! I'd call this a solid, though perhaps uninspiring biography. Great detail on certain aspects of his life, especially his crazy health issues. One cannot help but notice that the tenor and seriousness of political discussion and press coverage seemed far more elevated than today's clown show environment. Kennedy was clearly at least making the major decisions of the day in stark contrast to the current chief executive. This biography does a pretty good job overall but not really close to the standards of Robert Caro or David McCullough. 3.5 stars rounded down.

The most riveting biography I've ever read!

Fascinating insights into the terrible medical mess that was Kennedy's health. Despite his poor health it truly is amazing how much he was able to accomplish. It is also not without note that people have claimed that he might have survived the motorcade assassination if he were not wearing the back brace which greatly restricted his movement and ability to lower himself after being shot in the throat.