Book : Jack Kennedy Elusive Hero - Matthews, Chris

-Titulo Original : Jack Kennedy Elusive Hero

-Fabricante :

Simon & Schuster

-Descripcion Original:

“Filled with the vitality and spirit that made Jack Kennedy such a magical figure. Chris Matthews shows the cunning and determination beneath that magic. It’s an awesome and delightful book.” -Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs“What was he like?” Jack Kennedy said the reason people read biography is to answer that basic question. What was he like, this man whose own wife called him “that elusive, unforgettable man?” In this New York Times bestselling biography, Chris Matthews answers that question with the verve of a novelist. We see this most beloved president in the company of friends. We see and feel him close-up, having fun and giving off that restlessness of his. We watch him navigate his life from privileged, rebellious youth to gutsy American president. We witness his bravery in war and selfless rescue of his PT boat crew. We watch JFK as a young politician learning to play hardball and watch him grow into the leader who averts a nuclear war. Matthews’s extraordinary biography is based on personal interviews with those closest to JFK, oral histories by top political aide Kenneth O’Donnell and others, documents from his years as a student at Choate, and notes from Jacqueline Kennedy’s first interview after Dallas. As Matthews writes: “I found a fighting prince never free of pain, never far from trouble, never accepting the world he found, never wanting to be his father’s son. He was a far greater hero than he ever wished us to know.” Review “If history at its best is about telling storiesthat bring the past to life, then Chris Matthews is a master storyteller, forthis fascinating portrait brings Jack Kennedy more vividly to life than anyrecent work.-Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals About the Author Chris Matthews is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, Jack Kennedy-Elusive Hero, Tip and the Gipper-When Politics Worked, Kennedy and Nixon, and Hardball. He is the former host of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER ONE SECOND SON History made him, this lonely, sick boy. His mother never loved him. History made Jack, this little boy reading history. -Jacqueline Kennedy, November 29, 1963,from notes scribbled by Theodore H. White Certain things come with the territory. Jack Kennedy, born in 1917 in the spring of the next-to-last year of World War I, was the second son of nine children. That’s important to know. The first son is expected to be what the parents are looking for. Realizing that notion early, he becomes their ally. They want him to be like them-or, more accurately and better yet, what they long to be. Joseph Kennedy, a titan of finance, whose murky early connections helped bring him riches and power but never the fullest respect, had married in 1914, after a seven-year courtship, Rose Fitzgerald. The pious daughter of the colorful Boston mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, she launched their substantial family when, nine months later, she presented her husband with his son and heir, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. For the proud couple, he would be their bridge to both joining and mastering the WASP society from which they, as Roman Catholics in early twentieth-century America, were barred. Such stand-in status meant, for the young Joe, that he had to accept all the terms and rules put forth by those whose ranks he was expected to enter. The idea was to succeed in exactly the well-rounded manner of the New England Brahmin. Above all, that meant grades good enough to keep up at the right Protestant schools, and an ability to shine at sports as well. In this last instance, there was no doubt about the most desirable benchmark of achievement. The football field was not just where reputations were made and popularity earned, it was where campus legends were born. Joseph Kennedy’s handsome eldest boy would prove himself equal to the task. Enterin