Realistic. Brief. Factual.

I admit to an obsession with the Kennedy Family. I remember being a kid and looking through my mom's boxes of stuff from her childhood and finding an autographed picture from JFK and Jacqueline from like 1962 or something. I was fascinated. Then, I was enamored and fascinated with the idea that this young and against-type President was shot down in the prime of life. I remember seeing JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, and loving it, and I was convinced that there was a conspiracy. I remember just always being so completely fascinated and enthralled with JFK, Bobby, Rose, Teddy, and on and on. How could one family--the Kennedy's of Massachusetts--sustain so much tragedy? I love this book for being so honest about the imperfection of JFK and of the Kennedy Family. I love it for what it showed JFK to be: a human being with a serious illness, a man with imperfections and flaws and addictions, and a man who genuinely wanted to do right by the American people. It truly made me feel like I knew the real JFK and gave me insight into one of America's pinnacles in history.

My first Kennedy bio. I wanted one that had some balance to it, was solidly comprehensive, paid attention to the political issues and realities of the time, and didn't get lost in the conspiracies or rumors. This is a pretty good example of just that.

Dallek isn't interested in allowing this work descend into hagiography, but at the same time his also not interested in wallowing in the sordid or looking for extra axes to grind. He's critical, but fair, and is interested in trying to tease out some of the reasons behind the worst impulses of JFK, and putting together a fuller picture of the man and his presidency.

Comprehensive is one of the best descriptions of this one, because Dallek really does run through JFK's entire life, from the earliest years, through college, the war, congress, the Senate, and finally the presidency. His parents and siblings are looked at and the entirety of the life he grew up in and there's a pretty thorough grounding in his life before we ever get into his public life.

And there's some fascinating aspects. Dallek tells more than anyone had to this point about JFK's medical history and his ongoing ailments and the lengthy list of treatments he underwent to deal with it. Most people know about the Addison's disease at this point and that he had some back troubles, but the extent of his medical problems and the lengths that he not only went to conceal his infirmities but also the almost constant pain he was in is staggering. It's something you simply couldn't get away with today...but at the same time many of his treatments were the result of the limited medical knowledge and treatments of the day.

The philandering his something that gets referenced fairly frequently, but Dallek doesn't go into a lot of detail on most of it. Particularly in the White House years, it gets a reference but little more. That said, Dallek makes a reasonably convincing case that as unseemly as it was, it didn't really do much if anything to impair JFK's performance as president. Even more interesting is his thesis that his constant and consistent womanizing is deeply rooted in not only his upbringing (his father not only had mistresses, but brought them home; his mother clearly had sexual issues directly tied to her Catholicism) but also in his medical issues and the deaths of his siblings. It's the sort of thing that modern therapy might help someone deal with, but no way do you get that in the 1950's.

The presidential years are especially interesting. JFK's interest and performance in foreign policy is a major highlight, ranging from the Soviets to Berlin to Cuba to Vietnam makes for fascinating reading. The stuff with the military makes you wonder how we survived at times, and the number of people so casually comfortable with nuclear weapons (Kennedy most certainly, and wisely, was not one of them) is terrifying. On domestic affairs, Kennedy comes off as less successful, part in that he's less interested in these issues, and part that he's generally more cautious. He doesn't do well on race, but he doesn't come off badly either...he's the well-intentioned guy who doesn't understand the reality in a personal way, which leaves him removed from the struggle.

Excellent book. A good deep dive into one of the biggest figures of the 20th century.

John F. Kennedy. Still today, nearly 55 years after his death, JFK's name evokes emotion in the heart of every American. His look, his family, and his untimely death are permanently seared into the American conscious and remain a subject of vigorous debate.

In "An Unfinished Life," Dallek not only gives a readable, in-depth biography of JFK's life but he also manages identify the abstract, elusive character of JFK's legacy that has made him such a icon. Whether you view JFK as a visionary whose leadership, had he survived, would've shaped America's role in the world for a half century or as a deceitful womanizer who successfully hoodwinked generations of Americans into the mythology of Camelot, this book will force you to reconsider your view of its subject and see JFK not as an absolute, monolithic figure but as a man of great complexity, depth, and contradiction who wanted above all to ensure peace and prosperity in his time. Moreover, you will come to appreciate that, whether or not it was an illusion, his message of idealism and national greatness inspired the country around him, and that very few Presidents have better appealed to the better angels of our nature.

On a smaller note, the descriptions of JFK's life prior to becoming POTUS, both as a boy and an adult, are incredibly interesting. For those vignettes alone, the book is worth a read.

Sympathetic, but hardly hagiographic, biography of the 35th US president. In fact, I thought the first 300 or so pages of the book - Kennedy's life before the presidency - were quietly devastating as Dallek details the young Kennedy's immense privilege (his rich father pulled lots of strings for him) and penchant for womanizing. But these personal foibles recede to the background once the narrative reaches the presidency, which makes up the majority of the book, and the focus shifts to Kennedy administration policies. The discussion of these issues, particularly foreign policy problems like Cuba, Laos, Berlin, and arms control can be pretty weighty, so if you're expecting a gossipy tell-all of Kennedy's escapades, I'd direct you to Seymour Hersh's book on JFK. Dallek's more interested in policies than personalities.

I don't think there was anything particularly cutting-edge about his analysis of Kennedy's presidency either: Dallek praises Kennedy for his skillful handling of the Cuban missile crisis and chides him for his reluctance to take a lead on civil rights, but this is already the historical CW on Kennedy. What makes this book a novel contribution to the Kennedy bibliography is his thorough documenting of Kennedy's *many* medical maladies (seriously, this guy was a physical wreck) after he won access to JFK's medical files from the Kennedy library.

Didn't learn that much. Fairly cursory treatment of a generally fascinating subject.

Honestly, I only made it through 300 pages or so...lost interest with all the minutia that clogged the pages. How in the "h" did this author find out so much detail? More importantly, what made him think we cared? Perhaps I'll return to finish when I have read EVERYTHING else on my shelf. That'll be about 5 to 6 years.

Absolutely loving this class

John F. Kennedy, 34th President of the United States, is the first president of which I have personal memories. I was eleven years old when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas. I am sure every one of my fellow fifth grade classmates recall the shock and sad events of that infamous day. Therefore this was a presidential biography I anticipated reading, and I was not disappointed. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) was born into a powerful Irish-Catholic Boston family. His father, Joseph Kennedy, was a highly successful businessman and state political kingpin, who was determined that his sons would succeed in politics. This weighty mantle initially fell upon the oldest son, Joe Kennedy Jr. However Joe was killed in action during World War II. About the same time, JFK became a war hero when his PT boat was sunk in the Pacific war theater, and JFK helped rescue his surviving shipmates. Biographer Robert Dallek does an excellent job of sharing JFK’s mental astuteness, physical struggles, and moral foibles, of the war hero who would soon enter the world stage of national politics. First, upon graduating from Harvard, Kennedy authored “Why England Slept,” a critical analysis of England’s slow response to Hitler's Third Reich, especially pertinent during post-war Soviet-Western tensions. Secondly, Dallek exposes JFK’s severe and debilitating physical handicaps. Persistent bouts with Addison’s Disease, colitis, and spinal chord problems plagued JFK throughout his life. He hardly had a year when he was not hospitalized for one or more of these problems (interestingly, his father was able to falsify medical records allowing JFK to enter active WWII duty). Lastly, Dallek reveals the extent of JFK’s incorrigible philandering. The author posits, “Jack was a narcissist whose sexual escapades combatted feelings of emptiness bred by a cold, detached mother and a self-absorbed, largely absent father.” Perhaps, but it was a risqué and risky behavior for a man leading the country through treacherous world events. Regarding JFK’s presidential legacy (a mere 1,000 days), Dallek’s review is mixed. Kennedy botched the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco and allowed Khrushchev to gain the upper hand at the Vienna Summit. Though JFK feared an escalation in the Vietnam conflict, he allowed a massive buildup of American military “advisors,” ultimately leading to one of the bloodiest and ugliest conflicts in American history. However, JFK demonstrated both strength and restraint in handling the Cuba missile crisis (remember those under-the-desk nuclear war drills?) and the Soviet building of the Berlin wall. JFK’s Nuclear Test ban speech was powerful and it set the trend for détente with the Soviet Union. Sadly, international crisis took precedence over the battle for civil rights being waged throughout the country. Kennedy supported the civil rights movement, but not always as top political priority. Even more sadly, JFK’s assassination in 1963 precluded Kennedy from seeing the fruits of his labors – he lay in his Arlington Cemetery grave long before the first man walked on the moon (a program he initiated). Kennedy is often portrayed as the life of Camelot, however it was more aptly described as a life unfinished.

“In 1988, seventy-five historians and journalists described JFK as ‘the most overrated public figure in American history.’” And I’m not really sure I disagree with that statement. His domestic track record was essentially nothing. He showed some international chops with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which the author suggests only offsets The Bay of Pigs debacle. And he dug the country deeper into the Vietnam war. Kennedy is revered in people’s memories for his magnetism and that he was a promising person who died prematurely, but his actual track record doesn’t hold a candle to most second tier Presidents, much less Washington, Lincoln or FDR.

With all that aside I did enjoy this book and find Kennedy to be a really interesting character. It was really his older brother Joe who seemed destined for greatness early on, before dying at war. JFK’s identity was largely shaped by the insecurity of not being as good as his brother. After Joe died JFK said “I’m shadowboxing in a match the shadow is always going to win.”

I was also surprised to learn that JFK was one of the least healthy Presidents ever. He was under tons of medication and injections all the time just to function, and easily could have died much younger than 43.

An Unfinished Life is perhaps the most thorough—but not pedantic—presidential biography I have read since Chernow’s Washington. At 720 pages, it is longer than many that cover lives twice as long as Kennedy’s and presidencies nearly triple in number of days. But such detail paints the picture Dallek intends: Not of the highly ranked president and American royalty that many typical Americans hold onto, but the deceitful, womanizing, inexperienced young man rising to the nation’s highest office from nowhere, and making his share of mistakes. Not to be unfair, Kennedy’s wins are of course praised, and I have a new appreciation for how close the world came to nuclear war in 1962 before Kennedy talked Khrushchev down from the ledge.

Ultimately the charming man with the broad smile and witty comments, whose colors shined on the new medium of television (even in black and white), comes off as rather detached from the common man on the pages of a book that takes the reader through a life both privileged and unusually scarred. The coverage of Kennedy’s presidency is scholarly and thick, but the detail is crucial to understanding Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam, and the rest. After all, we choose to read presidential biographies not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

After the extensive review of the particulars of Kennedy’s thousand days, the presentation of his final one is very sudden and direct. I give Dallek points for this, because after forty years, there has been more than enough media detail of the assassination. Such a quick jolt at the end of the story gives the reader a sense of what American felt in late November, 1963.

Jacqueline Kennedy is barely mentioned, until after her husband's death and her efforts to preserve his positive legacy. The final pages gush about what might have been had Kennedy lived and won a second term. This is not for Dallek to contradict his own often-sour portrait of the man, but to feed upon the hopeful expectations of the administration beyond 1964, and to account for why Americans then and today held such a flawed commander in such high regard. I found the rosy outlook giving more meaning to the twisted timeline and alternate reality of Stephen King’s 11/22/63.

Dallek’s 2013 epilogue took a left turn and appeared to scold and school the still-worshipful public on what real presidential greatness is, offering quick lessons on several twentieth century giants and a couple of recent White House residents. It is slightly repetitive of some of his final words in the 2004 original print, and felt like unnecessary fluff after so much substance.

I don’t mean to say that Dallek was too rough on JFK. He was adequately rough, as a great biographer must be. But the detail offered tends to fly in the face of the ideas of Kennedy to which I am accustomed. Thankfully, his extramarital affairs are not dissected (they were probably sufficiently hidden at the time), but I was also struck by the inclusion of curse words in many of the quotes—something perhaps replaced by ellipses in some of the other bios I’ve read. Those, too, make Kennedy more real.

This is a very good biography of JFK, focusing principally on his presidency. Dallek obviously admires Kennedy, but that does not prevent him from being critical of his subject when he believes that the criticism is warranted.

Dallek's principal contribution is to document more thoroughly than any previous biographer Kennedy's many medical problems, the treatment he received and the extent to which the President, his family, his doctors and others conspired to conceal those problems from public view. In the end, Dallek concludes that, although he was often in pain, Kennedy managed his afflictions well and they did not adversely affect his ability to function as president. Dalleck also speculates, however, that in the modern age it would be impossible for a presidential candidate to conceal such problems as effectively as Kennedy did. He also assumes that someone with Kennedy's medical history could almost certainly not be elected to the office today.

Dalleck details Kennedy's extensive womanizing, both before and after he married Jackie, and which continued unabated during his presidency. Dalleck speculates that perhaps this compulsion resulted from the example that JFK's father had set and from Kennedy's fears about his own mortality because of his medical problems. Again, Dallek concludes that his womanizing did not distract Kennedy from the larger tasks that confronted him and so did not prevent him from being an effective president. Though many reporters and others knew or speculated about Kennedy's philandering, as quaint as it now seems, the press still believed that a president's private life was off limits. Dallek also points out that many of the journalists and editors who covered the Kennedy administration had extra-marital affairs of their own and so did not want to cast the first stone. Dalleck again assumes though, that no candidate with Kennedy's record in this department could be elected today.

Otherwise, Dallek's account is a fairy familiar one. He admits that Kennedy made mistakes early on in his administration, the Bay of Pigs fiasco principal among them. He also concedes that Kennedy came slowly to the cause of civil rights and tempered his actions by calculating the political consequences, which is hardly surprising. He also insists, though, that Kennedy learned from his mistakes and grew to be a better president as a result.

Dallek gives Kennedy very high marks for his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, and reading his account one realizes how perilously close we came to the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Kennedy was determined to give diplomacy every chance to work, even against the advice of military figures and others who argued for an attack on the missile sites and an invasion of the island. Considering some of the trigger-happy people who have occupied the office since 1963, one reads these chapters and becomes enormously grateful for the fact that this crisis fell to JFK and not to some of his successors.

Probably the greatest argument left from the Kennedy administration is the question of what JFK would have done with respect to Vietnam. Dallek covers in great detail Kennedy's handling of the problem and, based in part on new evidence, concludes that, had he lived, Kennedy almost certainly would not have enlarged the war. Dallek also concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of the President.

This is a rich, compelling book and may be the best biography of Kennedy that we now have. Reading it, one can only regret that, even for all his faults, JFK did not live long enough to serve a second term as president.