Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} JFK Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton ISBN 13: 9780679412168
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} JFK Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton ISBN 13: 9780679412168. The first in a multi-volume new biography of John F. Kennedy encompasses the early years of Kennedy's career, his youth and Harvard education, the story of PT-109, his affair with a suspected Nazi spy, and more. 100,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo. Tour. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. "Nigel Hamilton's story, told with great intelligence and sympathy, is of how Jack came to terms with his inheritance and frightful upbringing." - Daily Telegraph. "The definitive life of JFK. shows us, better than ever before, how the ambitious playboy began his transformation into the charismatic President." - Mail on Sunday. About the Author : Nigel Hamilton is the author of Monty , a three-volume official life of Field Marshal Montgomery which won the Whitbread Award and the Templer medal. He is currently working on the second and final volume of JFK: Life and Death of an American President . Review of “JFK: Reckless Youth” by Nigel Hamilton. Nigel Hamilton’s “JFK: Reckless Youth” was published in 1992 and was intended to be the first installment in projected three-volume series on John Kennedy. This New York Times bestseller was also the inspiration behind an ABC mini-series which aired in 1993. Hamilton is a British- born biographer and Senior Fellow at the University of Massachusetts. Among his recent works are a two-volume series on Bill Clinton and two volumes focusing on FDR during WWII. Unfortunately, this is the only volume in Hamilton’s series ever published. Almost immediately after publication it became the subject of enormous controversy – much of it generated by the Kennedy family (with the help of Doris Goodwin and others). As a result of his unflattering portrayal of the Kennedys in this first volume, Hamilton lost access to critical primary source documents and was forced to abandon the series. With 800 pages of text, this volume proves an exhaustive but riveting account of JFK’s early life up through his election as a twenty-nine-year-old Massachusetts Congressman. Nearly every aspect of Kennedy’s youth is examined with encyclopedic – and occasionally graphic – detail. The book’s strengths are numerous; among them are a lively, expressive and captivating narrative and the author’s incorporation of historical context throughout the text. On a more granular level, Hamilton provides better insight into JFK’s relationship with his parents than almost any other biographer and a more thoughtful view of JFK’s older brother than I’ve seen elsewhere. Hamilton also provides a more thorough discussion of Joseph P. Kennedy’s life (including his volatile relationship with FDR), the most descriptive and interesting discussion of JFK’s military service in the Pacific and the best introduction to Inga Arvad (one of Kennedy’s more infamous girlfriends) of any JFK biography I’ve read. The author is favorably disposed to his subject, praising him for his intellectual and interpersonal strengths, but rarely fails to castigate JFK for his appalling foibles. While Hamilton shows reasonable balance toward his subject, however, he demonstrates clear contempt for Kennedy’s father who is portrayed as a swindler, a coward, an abusive spouse and a serial philanderer. JFK’s mother fares little better as a repressed, emotionally distant Victorian figure whose response to her flawed marriage is to travel abroad without her family. For better – and for worse – much of the narrative’s vibrancy is derived at the expense of JFK and his father whose “extracurricular relationships” are often described in significant detail. While helping to debunk the “Camelot myth” and adding texture to the narrative, much of this extra insight is gratuitous and unnecessary. In addition, the author’s aversion to JFK’s father is displayed with a frequency and ferocity that seems almost pathological. If providing the reader a thick layer of historical context is a notable strength of this book, at times it is also a weakness. There are several occasions when this volume seems more like an engrossing history textbook than a biography. In many of these moments it is also clear the book’s length dilutes the central themes regarding JFK which the author intends to impress upon the reader. And during the more numerous moments when the book does feel like a biography, it frequently reads a dual- biography (of both JFK and his frequently-mentioned father). It is hard to imagine any of Joseph P. Kennedy’s traditional biographers capturing more of the man than has Hamilton…in a book ostensibly focused on JFK. Overall, “JFK: Reckless Youth” is a fascinating if flawed study of the young John F. Kennedy. No biography I have read on any president dives into its subject’s early life with the depth or color Hamilton provides…though others have come close (and with fewer distractions). For all its faults, this introductory volume to John Kennedy is a compelling read and it is regrettable Hamilton was unable to complete the series. New England Journal of Public Policy. What goes into the making of a president? To what extent are the mind and character of the American commander in chief determined by his background, his family — and his education? This article represents a transcript of two lectures Nigel Hamilton presented in the spring and fall of 1989 at the Massachusetts State Archives. They were derived from the preliminary sketches for the author's full-scale biography of John F. Kennedy, to be published by Houghton Mifflin in 1992 on the anniversary of the birth of the thirty-fifth president. What If John F. Kennedy Had Lived? Alternate histories about John F. Kennedy’s assassination range from liberal fantasies, in which the Vietnam War didn’t escalate and Kennedy harmonizes race relations in the United States, to — less commonly — conservative fantasies, in which JFK establishes a Catholic dynasty that rules America forever. Most books fall somewhere in between. Better America. Nigel Hamilton, who wrote JFK: Reckless Youth (1992), speculated in a 2003 article for The New York Times that Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam and negotiated détente with the new Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Civil rights legislation fails, triggering race riots. Lyndon Johnson is elected president in 1968 with Robert Kennedy as his vice president. Medicaid and Medicare pass in 1969. Johnson, who suffered a heart attack in 1955, dies from another that same year. Robert Kennedy is sworn in as president and appoints Martin Luther King as his vice president. Civil rights pass. The second President Kennedy signs a non-expansion pact with Brezhnev. North and South Vietnam reunite. King oversees a national desegregation program. The United States normalizes trade relations with Cuba in 1971. Riding on a conservative backlash, Ronald Reagan wins the 1972 election. It is Reagan, not Richard Nixon, who restores relations with communist China. Kennedy wins back the White House in 1980 with New York lieutenant governor Mario Cuomo as his running mate. Leonid Brezhnev Lyndon Johnson Robert Kennedy Martin Luther King. In the real world, Reagan lost the 1968 Republican nomination to Nixon and the 1976 nomination to Gerald Ford before finally winning in 1980. Walter Mondale considered asking Cuomo to be his vice presidential candidate in 1984 but decided to nominate Geraldine Ferraro. Cuomo was himself considered a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 1992 but declined to run both times. Simon Burns, in “What if Lee Harvey Oswald had missed?” published in Prime Minister Portillo… and other things that never happened: A Collection of Political Counterfactuals (2003), agrees Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam and overseen a less aggressive civil rights campaign, but a better anti-poverty program, than Johnson. In Stephen Baxter’s Voyage (1996), Kennedy survives the assassination attempt but is badly wounded and does not seek reelection in 1964. At Kennedy’s urging, his successor, Richard Nixon, invests in the space program, leading to a Moon landing in 1969 and a Mars landing in 1986. Largely the same. Historian Robert Dallek, who wrote An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (2003), argues in “JFK’s Second Term,” published in The Atlantic (June 2003), that a second Kennedy Administration would have been like Johnson’s domestically, with a focus on civil rights and poverty reduction, but different abroad. Dallek believes Kennedy would have defied the advice of his generals and avoided escalation in Vietnam. He also thinks JFK may have attempted rapprochement with Cuba. Dallek makes similar arguments in “JFK Lives,” published in What Ifs? of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Might Have Been , edited by Robert Cowley (2013): Kennedy would have passed civil rights, but only just, and Republicans would have been more successful against him in the 1964 and 1966 elections than they were against Johnson. Journalist Jeff Greenfield postulates in If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History (2013) that, with his brother Bobby as defense secretary, Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam but backed away from civil rights. All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964 (2017) by F.C. Schaefer sees Kennedy pulling out of Vietnam but invading Cuba to remove Fidel Castro. Kennedy grapples with hostile Texas oil barons, the mafia and Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are still killed. JFK in ’64 (2018), by Mark Huffman, imagines how Kennedy would have fought reelection against Berry Goldwater. Worse. In Rick Katze’s “Bobbygate,” published in Alternate Kennedys , edited by Mike Resnick (1992), JFK is not killed but — in a reversal of Watergate — his brother Bobby is implicated in a break-in at Republican Party headquarters.