Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
Only one problem with this excellent biography, and that is that the second instalment is still being researched. I might be dead by then. For those of us who lived through the Sixties JFK was a politician like no other, and there have certainly been no comparable claimants to the title of Leader of the Free World since him. He exuded magic. He was a politician you could really believe in. In this first volume which takes him up to 1956 when he narrowly failed to secure the nomination for Vice-President, we get intimately involved with his family. And what a family. His father Joe was mapping out his own career to take on the Presidency when he hit a brick wall. As ambassador to the UK in the lead up to WWII he took the misguided path of total support for Appeasement. Not only that, but he refused to call out the dictators Hitler and Mussolini. Bad mistake. He was recalled and his political career abruptly ended. He then tried to live his dreams through his eldest son Joe. Unfortunately he had a bad end as a brave pilot. It was only then that the mantle became JFK's. What a man. His heroics in rescuing his gunboat crew are revealed in great detail. His every illness, and my goodness there were many, and serious (he was read the Last Rites on 2 or 3 occasions) are laid out and we can only wonder how he coped. The tragedies that befell his family are piled one on top of the other...his own life being just The Great Tragedy. Someone said JFK despite all the publicity surrounding his death, really hasn't been given the attention he deserves. He certainly has it now in this warts and all biography. Truly memorable.
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