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John F. Kennedy: A Biography
John F. Kennedy creates an absorbing, insightful and distinguished biography of one of America's most legendary Presidents. While current fashion in Kennedy scholarship is to deride the man's achievements, this book describes Kennedy's strengths, explains his shortcomings, and offers many new revelations.
There are many specialized books on Kennedy's career, but no first-class modern biography--one that takes advantage of the huge volume of recent books and articles and new material released by the JFK library. Ten years in the making, this is a balanced and judicious profile that goes beyond the clash of interpretations and offers a fresh, nuanced perspective.
There are many specialized books on Kennedy's career, but no first-class modern biography--one that takes advantage of the huge volume of recent books and articles and new material released by the JFK library. Ten years in the making, this is a balanced and judicious profile that goes beyond the clash of interpretations and offers a fresh, nuanced perspective.
992 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2005
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About the author
Michael O'Brien
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 21, 2017
https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2017...
“John F. Kennedy: A Biography” by Michael O’Brien was published in 2005 after a decade of research which included access to recently-released material from the Kennedy Library. O’Brien is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin (Fox Valley) and the author of several books including “McCarthy and McCarthyism in Wisconsin” and “Vince: A Personal Biography of Vince Lombardi.”
The book’s publisher claims this to be the first modern biography of Kennedy to take advantage of a vast array of newly-released materials. But they seem to have overlooked Robert Dallek’s “An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy” published two years earlier with arguably superior access to fresh materials – and which the author himself cites in this book’s extensive bibliography.
Both a key strength and a notable weakness, O’Brien’s biography is nothing short of encyclopedic. This 905 page behemoth seems to cover every aspect of JFK’s life – often in daunting detail – and to thoroughly examine every controversy, large and small, with admirable balance and objectivity.
Several of the book’s chapters are particularly engaging. O’Brien’s discussion of Kennedy’s efforts to gain the Democratic presidential nomination is excellent (and not unexpectedly thorough). A later chapter on Kennedy’s personality, strengths, interests and style of engaging with colleagues was also fascinating. But the chapter covering Kennedy’s White House, his decision-making style and his limited reliance on his Cabinet is perhaps the most compelling.
But while the book contains a significant amount of wisdom, its most valuable insights are buried beneath a great mass of less compelling material. A basic rule-of-thumb is that if something can be covered in a paragraph, O’Brien takes a page; if it requires a page, O’Brien gives it a chapter. This verbosity apparently left the publisher unable to find room for the book’s end notes; they were once available online but now seem to have vanished.
The author’s approach to most “controversial” topics is to offer multiple perspectives on an issue, referencing previous biographers and their conclusions. After weighing the evidence O’Brien generally renders his own verdict before moving onto the next topic. The author’s conclusions are consistently thoughtful (and generally convincing) but this approach interrupts the flow of the narrative and leaves the book feeling far more like a literature review than a biography.
The book ends swiftly with Kennedy’s assassination and funeral…and without consideration of his legacy or impact on the country. Throughout the book’s forty-four chapters the author takes care to avoid siding with ardent fans of Kennedy but also to avoid castigating him for his most conspicuous faults. And in the end, rather than evaluate the Kennedy legacy, he leaves final consideration of this inspirational but flawed president to the reader.
Overall, Michael O’Brien’s “John F. Kennedy: A Biography” is impressive in both size and scope but it offers little of Kennedy which is truly unique…other than its style of arbitrating controversies related to Kennedy’s life. Some readers will find this book a valuable reference on JFK – it is hard to imagine a more thorough and extensive collection of the circumstances surrounding his life. But most readers will find the book’s size intimidating, its detail burdensome and its most valuable wisdom and insights spread far too thin.
Overall rating: 3½ stars
“John F. Kennedy: A Biography” by Michael O’Brien was published in 2005 after a decade of research which included access to recently-released material from the Kennedy Library. O’Brien is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin (Fox Valley) and the author of several books including “McCarthy and McCarthyism in Wisconsin” and “Vince: A Personal Biography of Vince Lombardi.”
The book’s publisher claims this to be the first modern biography of Kennedy to take advantage of a vast array of newly-released materials. But they seem to have overlooked Robert Dallek’s “An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy” published two years earlier with arguably superior access to fresh materials – and which the author himself cites in this book’s extensive bibliography.
Both a key strength and a notable weakness, O’Brien’s biography is nothing short of encyclopedic. This 905 page behemoth seems to cover every aspect of JFK’s life – often in daunting detail – and to thoroughly examine every controversy, large and small, with admirable balance and objectivity.
Several of the book’s chapters are particularly engaging. O’Brien’s discussion of Kennedy’s efforts to gain the Democratic presidential nomination is excellent (and not unexpectedly thorough). A later chapter on Kennedy’s personality, strengths, interests and style of engaging with colleagues was also fascinating. But the chapter covering Kennedy’s White House, his decision-making style and his limited reliance on his Cabinet is perhaps the most compelling.
But while the book contains a significant amount of wisdom, its most valuable insights are buried beneath a great mass of less compelling material. A basic rule-of-thumb is that if something can be covered in a paragraph, O’Brien takes a page; if it requires a page, O’Brien gives it a chapter. This verbosity apparently left the publisher unable to find room for the book’s end notes; they were once available online but now seem to have vanished.
The author’s approach to most “controversial” topics is to offer multiple perspectives on an issue, referencing previous biographers and their conclusions. After weighing the evidence O’Brien generally renders his own verdict before moving onto the next topic. The author’s conclusions are consistently thoughtful (and generally convincing) but this approach interrupts the flow of the narrative and leaves the book feeling far more like a literature review than a biography.
The book ends swiftly with Kennedy’s assassination and funeral…and without consideration of his legacy or impact on the country. Throughout the book’s forty-four chapters the author takes care to avoid siding with ardent fans of Kennedy but also to avoid castigating him for his most conspicuous faults. And in the end, rather than evaluate the Kennedy legacy, he leaves final consideration of this inspirational but flawed president to the reader.
Overall, Michael O’Brien’s “John F. Kennedy: A Biography” is impressive in both size and scope but it offers little of Kennedy which is truly unique…other than its style of arbitrating controversies related to Kennedy’s life. Some readers will find this book a valuable reference on JFK – it is hard to imagine a more thorough and extensive collection of the circumstances surrounding his life. But most readers will find the book’s size intimidating, its detail burdensome and its most valuable wisdom and insights spread far too thin.
Overall rating: 3½ stars
August 2, 2020
a very good read spanning the life of JFK. It goes into more detail for the more important life events. Though I could sense an author bias for JFK he was very even handed and times critical JFK. You got the sense of a very charismatic man, that could be focused and driven while at the same time reckless and juvenile. His presidency was one of huge failure and successes and many of these were determined by decisions he made. A brilliant man who after making a mistake would try to never make it again in his professional life but took unnecessary risks in his personal life. He could be very kind and generous and mean and vindictive to those around him.
August 23, 2021
A massive book - 905 pages. An interesting man- not especially idealistic, but very pragmatic. The sections about his youth and war experiences were enlightening, but I was turned off by the chapters on his womanizing and medical problems. Because he was cut down tragically in the apogee of his life he has become a martyred icon of liberalism, but I think if he had lived longer he would have been brought down by his feet of clay!
March 15, 2018
Very informational and inspiring. Nice read to get a book done quickly and still learn something new.
October 4, 2018
One of my favorite books. Even though he was a president way before I was born, I spite of his flaws, he still tried to become a better president
April 20, 2024
4.5 Stars
August 6, 2015
This might get downgraded to 3; it's hovering between 3 and 4.
It took me forever to read, but that was all me/life -- it's actually a generally fast-moving bio and pretty engaging. Things I did not dig: endnotes with no endnotes. That's right -- for some reason the notes weren't published in the book (blah blah length and production constraints apologetic note from the publisher blah blah) but you can read them online or write off to the publisher for them. I'm really tempted to do the latter, except I checked this out from the library, and do I really want to own the endnotes to a book and not the book? But who exactly the f!** is going to read a hardcover book but go online to read an endnote several times a page? So you go through this with these regularly appearing numbers that lead you nowhere...
AS for the writing and organizing -- well, it was chronological for his early life and thematic for his presidency. I get why authors do the whole thematic-presidency chapter organization, but when it's not deftly handled it's really distracting. I want to feel that I am in capable hands and not read something about Vietnam or the Dominican Republic and have to try to remember what was happening in Berlin the exact same week, told 400 pages earlier.
In general, I liked O'Brien's take on the questions and scandals of Kennedy (womanizing, involvement in Vietnam, nukes, intellectual convictions or lack thereof, Father Joe, PT boat, etc.) as he would present and analyze both sides of the stories. (Not that we could check the sources...) The ending though -- you know, Texas Book Depository and whatnot? -- was like page. Not that this book purported to or should have been about the assassination (there are other entire books about the event, and this was about JFK's life) but it was almost weird how it ended. Was it supposed to reflect JFK's sudden, unexpected demise, kind of Sopranos-finale-style? 'Cause that's grisly.
So, in case you didn't know, JFK was pretty much an ass to women (with the possible exception of his sisters, sometimes) and he and Bobby were fairly paranoid about Communism, but then, who wasn't overexcited about it then? But he also had some admirable abilities and he is interesting to read about, even though you also already know so many of the players as you read this bio, unlike with some prez bios.
Worth a read.
It took me forever to read, but that was all me/life -- it's actually a generally fast-moving bio and pretty engaging. Things I did not dig: endnotes with no endnotes. That's right -- for some reason the notes weren't published in the book (blah blah length and production constraints apologetic note from the publisher blah blah) but you can read them online or write off to the publisher for them. I'm really tempted to do the latter, except I checked this out from the library, and do I really want to own the endnotes to a book and not the book? But who exactly the f!** is going to read a hardcover book but go online to read an endnote several times a page? So you go through this with these regularly appearing numbers that lead you nowhere...
AS for the writing and organizing -- well, it was chronological for his early life and thematic for his presidency. I get why authors do the whole thematic-presidency chapter organization, but when it's not deftly handled it's really distracting. I want to feel that I am in capable hands and not read something about Vietnam or the Dominican Republic and have to try to remember what was happening in Berlin the exact same week, told 400 pages earlier.
In general, I liked O'Brien's take on the questions and scandals of Kennedy (womanizing, involvement in Vietnam, nukes, intellectual convictions or lack thereof, Father Joe, PT boat, etc.) as he would present and analyze both sides of the stories. (Not that we could check the sources...) The ending though -- you know, Texas Book Depository and whatnot? -- was like page. Not that this book purported to or should have been about the assassination (there are other entire books about the event, and this was about JFK's life) but it was almost weird how it ended. Was it supposed to reflect JFK's sudden, unexpected demise, kind of Sopranos-finale-style? 'Cause that's grisly.
So, in case you didn't know, JFK was pretty much an ass to women (with the possible exception of his sisters, sometimes) and he and Bobby were fairly paranoid about Communism, but then, who wasn't overexcited about it then? But he also had some admirable abilities and he is interesting to read about, even though you also already know so many of the players as you read this bio, unlike with some prez bios.
Worth a read.
August 3, 2015
It is surprisingly difficult to find a one-volume biography of John F Kennedy, as O'Brien himself notes as part of the reasoning behind writing this book. While there are gaggles of titles to choose from on specific points of his life, his presidency, or his death, rare is the author who follows Kennedy from beginning to end. O'Brien's narrative style is quite interesting -- up until the presidency, the narrative is essentially chronological, but when the reader gets to the presidency, the chapters become framed around specific subjects/topics with a loose chronology (the first half of the presidential chapters focus primarily on the early presidency while the latter half bring the reader up to late 1962-1963). It does not provide a great deal of information about the assassination, a decision of O'Brien's that I highly agree with as I think there are other sources that do a good job of covering that series of events. However, it places it in the greater context of Kennedy's life and does a good job of wrapping up the story of a complex individual. My one complaint was the lack of end notes - due to the length, the decision was made to post them on the publisher's website. However, the publishing company has since been taken over by another publishing company, so the endnotes are no longer available on the website. For the casual reader, there will be little lost by this lacking, but for anyone with a scholarly interest in the world, it does complicate things a bit. Overall, though, a very insightful, well-written biography.
March 26, 2008
Not a bad biography, though much of it consists of patching together passages from previous biographies. Seems that new ground is broken with some new medical records and some recently declassified information. JFK was an interesting guy and president, and eludes pigeonholing either as a politiican or as a man.
June 21, 2011
Note to self: finished reading and quoting from this one, no need to order again.
Yes, I'm writing a paper on a Cold War speech by JFK...
Yes, I'm writing a paper on a Cold War speech by JFK...
May 29, 2013
My favorite biography on JFK
June 26, 2013
Took forever to read, but it is a huge book. Very balanced in showing what was good and bad about JFK.
July 6, 2014
An excellent, clear summary of the life of a significant person.
August 21, 2012
Good!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews