Last month was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy (assassinated in 1963) and Senator Ted Kennedy (died of natural causes in 2009). At the time he was killed, he was running for president himself, having served as Attorney General in his brother's administration and then as a Senator from New York State. Halberstam details how Kennedy waffled for months about whether to enter the 1968 election. His primary motivation was his growing conviction that the war in Vietnam was being badly bungled by the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, but the notion of primarying an incumbent was almost unheard of at the time and many of his advisors thought he was better off to wait until 1972 to run.

I was only 4 years old when RFK was killed, so I don't remember him at all except that my mom always said he was the best of the bunch, Kennedy-wise. I never had the chance to ask David Halberstam if he thought that was true, but after reading this book I'd suspect the answer would have been yes. Halberstam was part of the press pool tagging along as Kennedy entered the 1968 campaign, following him all the way from the Indiana primary to his final, fatal election day in California. This book isn't intended to be a comprehensive biography, and it doesn't waste much space speculating about how the country would have been different if Kennedy had lived and become president. But it's an absorbing inside look at how the campaign season unfolded, all the choices and decisions that had to be made daily, and the ways the candidate and his advisors got things right as well as the many mistakes they made.

Something I learned from this book is that contrary to the revisionist history that is often recited today, Kennedy was by no means a lock to win the Democratic nomination in 1968, even after his big primary win in California. The electoral process at that time meant not every state had a primary. Most delegates who cast the actual votes for presidential candidates at the party conventions were chosen by the political establishment, not the people. And the Democratic establishment didn't like RFK, or at least mistrusted him, because by 1968 he was spouting some pretty radically liberal positions: equal rights for black citizens, support for migrant workers, anti-poverty measures for both urban and rural poor. The fervor that was stirred up whenever Kennedy made a public appearance somewhere made more dispassionate political honchos shudder.

If there's any criticism I have of the book, it's the lack of historical perspective. That's understandable, as the book was published in 1968, shortly after the assassination. It's about as close to "instant history" as you can get. As such, it's a valuable document of the way things were seen and perceived at the time but it would be interesting to read a book that compares and contrasts the ways that campaigns were conducted then and how they are conducted now. As an example, it's impossible to conceive of a successful presidential candidate today who did not declare he was running until after the New Hampshire and other primaries had already been contested. I'm still glad I read it, even though it made me sad to think of the tremendous potential for good that was lost on that June evening in 1968. ( )

Robert Kennedy was a master manager, but an uncertain, conflicted candidate. That is the essence of this inside look at the months of 1968 when RFK took on the sitting president and his own party. It is a real-time, visceral, fly-on-the-wall account, embellished with commentary about the country, the electorate, and the party.

But it is a surprisingly tough read. It seems to be a flood of reminiscences assembled from Halberstam’s notes at the time. As such they are a good “you are there” scene setter. But as a result, they are also disjointed, inelegant and incomplete.

There are numerous places where Halberstam just lost me, because of antecedents. I don’t know whether the “he” refers to the antecedent, or someone else. Often, I turned out to be wrong. Sometimes he starts using someone’s nickname, and I had to figure out who it was. You’re supposed to know most of the characters already, because many get no introduction; they just appear as authorities of one sort or another. You’re supposed to know what ADA and Hickory Hill are. And maddeningly, I had trouble in the first chapter keeping track of whether he was talking about JFK or RFK, because he calls them both Kennedy. As for inside jokes, I still don’t understand why “Who’s the pool TV man getting him when he shaves tomorrow?” (pg 75) is uproariously funny, but seems to deserve brackets and quotes. And fragments of sentences just add to the bumpy ride. There are badly structured sentences, difficult to absorb. I guess in 1969, when the original was published, everything was fresh in the public mind. But it isn’t today.

Robert Kennedy saves this book.

My favorite moment was in Chicago, where RFK humbled himself in front of Mayor Daley, the godfather of The Machine. Kennedy asked him for support and advice in his campaign, and Daley’s contribution was “Get a haircut.”

RFK became more and more radical every day. Every stop, every speech put him in front of more poverty, prejudice and hypocrisy, and it ate away at him. His positions became more and more divorced from the mainstream, until just before the California primary he declared: “My first responsibility is to the United States, not the Democratic Party….Feeling as strongly as I do, I can do nothing other than what I do.” Oh, for a Robert Kennedy in Washington today. ( )

In a nutshell, Unfinished Odyssey is the campaign story of Robert Kennedy. Halberstam follows Kennedy's entire campaign from his beginning reluctance to run to his fateful ending assassination. Along the way Halberstam paints an interesting picture of the attitudes towards the U.S.'s involvement with the Vietnam war. Those in power who felt the U.S. needed to become more involved were the hawks while those in favor of pulling out were the doves. Kennedy was a dove. He delves into the lives of the supporters and the detractors starting with Lyndon Johnson and ending with Herbert Humphrey.

Some issues with Unfinished Odyssey: the chronology is scattered and hard to follow from time to time. Then again, I often find flashbacks in nonfiction are often clunky. Also, I disagreed with Halberstam's ending. Everyone (myself included) expects a story about Robert Kennedy to include his murder. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy is no different. Everyone expects it to include the bitter end. Even if the funeral and country's reaction to Kennedy's death isn't part of the story surely the murder would be. Maybe Halberstam was thinking everyone knows the end of the story, so why include it? It is, after all, called the unfinished odyssey. ( )