Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (Review)

There are some books that are right for certain times. Certain books that if you don't read them as a child, you won't ever appreciate properly if you try to read them as an adult. Books that when you pick them up and read them affect you in such a way that they never would have if you'd read them a year ago...or a year from now. For me I think, Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words is such a book. When I was in high school I did a huge research paper on Robert Kennedy. I got really interested and started reading more and more even after the paper was finished. One of my good friends gave me this book as soon as it came out in a trade paperback edition back in 1989. But for whatever reason--the demands of college, perhaps--I never read it. I kept it on the TBR pile and kept putting it off. That was a mistake.

It's not that I'm not interested in RFK anymore. I am. I read a really good book about him last year, Robert F. Kennedy: A Memoir by Jack Newfield, and was totally caught up in the history again. But this book is a very different thing. It is composed of transcripts of interviews conducted in 1964, 1965 and 1967 with RFK as part of an oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library. There are a lot of details about events that took place before I was born and which, in the years since my intense research, have grown very fuzzy in the memory. I would have appreciated this book so much more if I had read it when the research was much fresher.

But, that said, this is still a very good book. When it came out, I'm sure it made quite a splash. It gave the reading public the never-before-published inside view of what went on in the White House and the Attorney General's office during the JFK presidency. Details of the Bay of Pigs and the civil rights campaign and early years of Vietnam straight from the the president's most trusted adviser. Through most of the interviews, Kennedy has a very matter-of fact tone--a man just telling what happened and how he participated. Then there are sections that are very touching which give a view of the deep respect and friendship that had grown up between the two brothers. He shares the hopes and aspirations that he and JFK had for what they hoped would be JFK's second term in office. He also speaks quite openly--and irritably--about Lyndon Johnson and about how their very tenuous relationship deteriorated so rapidly in the days after his brother's assassination. And he ends with tentative musings about what might be ahead for him.

A very informative book. Chock full of details. A valuable resource for anyone interested in the presidency of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's involvement during those years...or both. Three stars....if I had been able to read this sooner, I'm sure I would have rated it higher.

A-Z Wednesday: The Letter J

It's A-Z Wednesday!!

To join, here's all you have to do:

Go to your stack of books

Find an author whose first or last name starts with the letter of the week

Post:

1~ a photo of the book

2~ title and synopsis

3~ link(amazon, barnes and noble etc.)

4~Go back to Reading At The Beach and leave your link in the comments.

If you've already reviewed the book, add it or the link to your post.

This week's letter is: "J"

Robert F Kennedy: A Memoir by Jack Newfield (Click the title for my Review)

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (August 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255315
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255314
• Category: Biography/Memoir

Blurb (from Amazon): As one of the most complex, charismatic and controversial figures of our times, Robert Kennedy occupies a remarkable and paradoxical place in the American imagination. On the right he has been idolized by Rudy Giuliani and memorialized by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who renamed the Justice Department after him. On the left, his admirers say he represented the last hope of revitalizing the liberal tradition. But who was Robert Kennedy? To acclaimed reporter Jack Newfield, who worked closely with him during his last years, RFK was a human being far different from the myths that surrounded his name. In this haunting and memorable portrait we see what kind of man died when Robert Kennedy was shot. And what kind of leader America lost.

Candle #20: Robert F Kennedy: A Memoir

I have been interested in Robert F Kennedy since the high school history class where we were assigned an in-depth research paper. We had recently covered this period of history and I was drawn to the figure of RFK. At that time, I read from many biographies and other histories of the time...both those pro-Kennedy and those against. I soon became one of many who believe that Bob Kennedy could have made a difference (Yes, Bob. He never liked "Bobby.")

Jack Newfield's memoir covers the last few years of Kennedy's life--from the assassination of his brother to his own death in 1968. Newfield began his relationship with Kennedy a critic and wound up one of his biggest supporters. Newfield's memoir poignantly shows the changes that Kennedy experienced. Changes that took him from the "ruthless" younger brother of the President--who hounded the Teamsters and took on any one who would criticize his brother--to the compassionate presidential candidate who had a real chance to unite the black population and white, working class America. Ever since then historians have been wondering "what might have been."

Kennedy after JFK's assassination is revealed as a "sensual" politician. The pain he suffered in losing a brother made him more open to the pain of others. He didn't want statistics. He didn't want aides bringing him information on the plight of the poor blacks in Bedford-Stuuyvesant in New York or the migrant workers of the south and California. He had to go and see for himself. And after he went, he was changed. Kennedy became a real "people's politician" after he went out into America and saw how its citizens were living.

Many people of the time who were anti-Kennedy try to claim that this change in RFK was purely opportunistic. But reading the speeches quoted in this memoir, I cannot see what grounds they had for saying such things. The change in Kennedy is gradual, as if he's feeling his way into new territory--but the speeches get stronger and stay consistent through to the end. Even when it seemed his new stance would hurt him politically (and, given the charges made by his detractors, it certainly did to some extent), he continued to follow his conscience. A conscience which said after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all . We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land."

And a conscience which preferred this quote from Camus:

"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children." To which he added: "And if you don't help us, who else in this world can help us?"

This book obviously didn't change my mind about Robert Kennedy. But reading it did remind me of what I had learned about him twenty (or so...) years ago and taught me even more. I've given this book four and a half stars out of five on Visual Bookshelf.

Only two more books to go and I'll have completed the Birth Year Reading Challenge!

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Here's how it works:

*Grab your current read
*Open to a random page
*Share two or three "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page. Be careful not to include spoiliers! You don't want to ruin the book for others.
*Remember to show the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

Here's mine from Robert F. Kennedy: A Memoir by Jack Newfield:

What his romanticism did was provide an emotional ballast for his pragmaticism, to give it a humanist thrust. It was what made him different from more detached and conservative friends, like Robert McNamara, Byron White, or Theodore Sorensen. Kennedy identified with people, not data, or institutions, or theories. Poverty was a specific black face to him, not a manila folder full of statistics.