Robert F Kennedy The Myth And The Man

For most of his life, Robert Kennedy stood in the shadow cast by his older brother, John; only after President Kennedy's assassination did the public gain a complete sense of Robert ("Bobby," we called him) as a committed advocate for social justice and a savvy politician in his own right. In this comprehensive biography, James W. Hilty offers a detailed and nuanced account of how Robert was transformed from a seemingly unpromising youngster, unlikely to match the accomplishments of his older brothers, to the forceful man who ran "the family business," orchestrating the Kennedy quest for political power.

Robert F. Kennedy's life and legacy are explored in best-selling author C. David Heymann's provocative new book. The first full-scale biography of this complex and controversial Kennedy, RFK illuminates the man, his family, and an unforgettable chapter in our national history.

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another..." -Robert F. Kennedy It was this message that Robert Kennedy took to the American people in his ill-fated senatorial campaign, his last and final one that would lead to his assassination. It would end not only a colorful career but also end a message of hope for the troubled 60's. Robert F. Kennedy was born into a wealthy and competitive family. The message for every Kennedy was to strive hard, work hard, and by all means win your battles. He spent his whole life trying to reach new goals and new heights. Whether it was helping his brother with campaigning, becoming Attorney General, or by scaling mountaintops or kayaking down swift rivers, Robert always believed in pushing oneself further and further. Even with the untimely death of his brother John, Robert continued his quest to make it on his own. He was successful in becoming a United States senator from New York, which gave him an opportunity to help the poor and uneducated.

John F. Kennedy was not only a president, but also a symbol for America's most cherished ideas. In The Kennedy Obsession, John Hellmann takes a thoroughly original approach to understanding Kennedy's star power and his carefully crafted public image. Tracing Kennedy's self-creation as diligent scholar, bashful hero, and sensitive rebel-cued by cultural figures such as Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway, and Cary Grant-and the images of Kennedy in the aftermath of his assassination, Hellmann reveals the painstaking transformation of private life into public persona, of a man into perhaps the major American myth of our time.

In this groundbreaking biography of Edward Kennedy, historian and journalist Burton Hersh combines a lifetime of research and reporting with a lively mixture of never–before–told anecdotes (including the definitive version of the incident at Chappaquiddick, the details of which Kennedy himself filled in for Hersh shortly after it occurred) to create a broad yet unfailingly intimate portrait of the politician who would be universally acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's greatest American legislators. Hersh was acquainted with Kennedy since his college days, and the result here is a unique series of revelations that serve to reinterpret the senator's public and private personas. Conditioned by deep–seated fears that he was an afterthought within his own powerful family, Kennedy developed a genius for conciliation and strategizing that made him a dramatically more effective political figure than either of his older brothers. In addition to this biography's account of the Chappaquiddick incident, Hersh also delivers the first full report of the vendetta between Kennedy and Richard Nixon, exposing the behind–the–scenes manipulations to which Kennedy resorted to drive Nixon from office during the Watergate scandal.