It was interesting and illuminating. Kennedy died before I was born but I have watched that film every year of my life and have always placed Kennedy on a pedestal. This book gave me a more realistic view.
I knew he slept with women other than his wife , but his letter and diary entries paint a particularly explicit and unsettling portrait.
He was also more of a "politician " than I realized. ( )

This is an extraordinarily clear and detailed biography of the legendary yet all too human American president, John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek, author of an acclaimed two-volume biography of Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, has found, remarkably, untapped sources to bring additional life and light to Kennedy's story. Chief among these new resources are vast elements of Kennedy's medical records, which indicate both the excruciating pain and personal contortions JFK went through in an effort to serve well as president while also keeping his disturbing medical conditions from the public. Kennedy emerges from this book as not a great or epic president but as a very human being whose reach often exceeded his grasp and who sometimes did not reach far nor fast enough. The picture the reader is left with is of an admirable, physically brave and stalwart man, who had a genius for the subtleties of politics and an occasional, unfortunate penchant for learning from his mistakes only after making large ones. It is a fine book about a remarkable man. ( )

Acquired in 2022. About 2/3 rd read.

I didn't know much about Kennedy prior to reading this so I learned quite a bit about him.

Notably focused on his health that is interesting at first but then it just seems to repeat earlier mentions of issues/med's which does not further any understanding of JFK and really only serves as a reminder.

This book covers early life through his presidency pretty well, and while seeming to cover all aspects of the good, bad, and ugly, I felt it ran more towards adoring conclusions. ( )

Kennedy doesn’t impress me; (I don’t hate him). Dallek didn’t stand over me as I typed this and tell me what to say.

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It’s moderately useful for intergenerational understanding, (“everybody my age can tell you where they were when he was shot”) which is why I read it. Not that I actually share the fan’s opinion, but I like to know what the people are thinking.

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[I mean, part of the reason why JFK is more popular than LBJ is simply that the early 60s were a time of a more aristocratic liberalism than the late 60s, which were more counter-cultural and protest-driven.

.... He would have become a lot less popular if he had lived.

By thy blood dost thou buy thy fame.]

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In retrospect “Killing Kennedy” is probably better at familiarizing you with American mythology; this is sorta what you’d remember about him if you were a news junkie, you know.

Not that it’s a better or a worse book, but it’s certainly different, indeed as it intended to be.

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You do get a sense that the Cold War was a scary time in which to grow up; the White House was slightly paranoid about the communists (Khrushchev and his bombs) trying taking over the world, everybody was, (and some of them were) which can only have made it more difficult to deal with some of the challenges of the era.

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Well, especially the public was paranoid; people are crazy. The government was paranoid, like, make little plans, do this do that; the public was paranoid like: go to war with Russia today—or next week?

And the communists were crazy too—maneuvers for power with nuclear risks.

.... So Kennedy managed the missile crisis successfully, which would have been a problem (most Soviet missiles couldn’t reach the US from Russia) if it been allowed to continue and fester.

But if Eisenhower or Truman had done the same thing it wouldn’t have created the same reputation.

Although it’s hard to put yourself inside the social mind of the previous century.

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It’s interesting to read about the perspective of the people who were in power at the time.

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Although it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Dr. King was a black man in the South and that Jack was a Kennedy, and that that’s pretty much the way they acted—the prophet and the rich man’s son. JFK only manages to stand up to him because of the office and because he too was killed. (Any death is the end of something beautiful, but people are tiresome with the whole, “Don Corleone put an end to the Last American President”, etc. Conspiracy theories, you know. People get bored. I guess I get bored too, although I try not to take the grandiosity of boredom too seriously.)

Although it is perhaps possible for a rich man’s son to be something more than a poster boy, (though not so commonly in post-Victorian America), and many radicals aren’t really prophets, in this case the two, MLK and JFK, are pretty much that very contrast—the black prophet and the rich man’s son. What a country, where everything is money. If you can barely read, but you have money, you’re rich. “You think I should know something about anything. Let me check my bank account and see.” The deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this life say, “Money is the measure of life.” I suppose in a way it is, in the same sense that chicken thighs are the measure of life. Meat is an important part of life, but any free man would risk it all for his dignity. But for a Kennedy, meat and dignity and all the rest comes so easy that he can’t quite understand. And a hundred years before Lincoln was both president and prophet; a century later, we had both inherited his gifts, and regressed.

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Although I probably like my abstractions too much.

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Again, I can’t step inside the mind of the previous century.

.... I suppose one begins to understand what one does not know.

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Perhaps it would be better to forget the facts; “should we assassinate Diem”, etc.

He was king of America, right.

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Dallek’s finishing the mostly narrative book with analytical epilogues is highly competent.