John F. Kennedy creates an absorbing, insightful and distinguished biography of one of America's most legendary Presidents. While current fashion in Kennedy scholarship is to deride the man's achievements, this book describes Kennedy's strengths, explains his shortcomings, and offers many new revelations.


There are many specialized books on Kennedy's career, but no first-class modern biography--one that takes advantage of the huge volume of recent books and articles and new material released by the JFK library. Ten years in the making, this is a balanced and judicious profile that goes beyond the clash of interpretations and offers a fresh, nuanced perspective.
Michael O’Brien is a retired professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Fox Valley. His writing has earned top awards from Choice magazine, the Wisconsin Library Association, the National Catholic Press Association, and the Wisconsin Magazine of History. John F. Kennedy creates an absorbing, insightful, and distinguished portrait of one of America's most legendary Presidents. While current fashion in Kennedy scholarship is to deride the man's achievements, this book describes Kennedy's strengths, explains his shortcomings, and offers many new revelations. There are many specialized books on Kennedy's career, but no first-class modern biography—until now. This massive study takes advantage of the huge volume of recent books and articles about John Kennedy, and of the many new materials released by the JFK Library. Ten years in the making, this is a balanced and judicious profile that goes beyond the clash of interpretations to offer a fresh, nuanced perspective.   "'Where is the heart in the man?' a contemporary of John F. Kennedy asked, and more than four decades and several hundred books later, it remains a good question. Although Michael O'Brien never satisfactorily answers it, no one else has either, and his diligent, exhaustive, nearly thousand-page, decade-in-the-making biography provides more evidence that this intensely private man, who was so adept at compartmentalizing his friends and emotions, may have placed his heart in a lock box without a key."—Thurston Clarke, The Washington Post "O'Brien . . . weighs the evidence, considers earlier authors' conclusions, and renders a judgment that is usually thoughtful and convincing . . . It may be rash to credit anyone with having the last word on anything, but it is difficult to imagine anyone improving on some of O'Brien's Solomonic rulings."—The Washington Post "It will come as nothing less than a godsend to serious historians who thought they knew everything there was to know about America's most glamorous and intriguing president."—New York Post "Having read nearly seventy-five books on the Kennedys, I doubted that another nine hundred-plus page biography could hold my interest. I was wrong. O'Brien has done an excellent job of researching and writing about the late president."—Alex Coffin, The Charlotte Observer "Along with Herbert Parmet and Robert Dallek, Michael O'Brien has written the most comprehensive biography of John F. Kennedy. Prodigiously researched and lucidly written, it supersedes Dallek in its understanding of Kennedy's medical problems. By providing new insights, O'Brien also adds to our understanding of Kennedy's private and public life."—James N. Giglio, author of The Presidency of John F. Kennedy "Professor Michael O'Brien has written a richly empathetic biography in which he faces square on the revisionist truths of the last decades and yet John F. Kennedy remains graced with the laurels of humanity."—Laurence Leamer, bestselling author of Sons of Camelot "A sprawling, unwieldy, yet readable life of the fallen president. O'Brien professes to have spent more than ten years on this book, and there's no reason to doubt him: he cites just about every study and incidental work in the literature, and his own massive contribution sometimes slows to a real-time crawl as he describes key events in Kennedy's presidency . . . The best portions chronicle JFK's abbreviated presidency, showing how he allowed himself to be manipulated on the matter of Vietnam while gaining more solid knowledge of Cuba and the Soviet Union, and how the president, a sharp student of economics, tried to work magic with tax cuts that flew in the face of a wartime deficit, a condition that will seem familiar to readers today . . . [W]orthy, ambitious, and of much interest to students of recent US history."—Kirkus Reviews "The prevailing feeling among many is that everything there is to know about John F. Kennedy is already known. Surely there have been so many books about his life—as a politician and as a man—that it's easy to feel overwhelmed. But O'Brien, taking advantage of new documentary material (including the recently archived correspondence of Joseph Kennedy and the papers of JFK's friend Le-Moyne Billings), has found a somewhat different focus on the familiar story and offers a balanced rejoinder to some of the harsher, revisionist biographies that have appeared in recent years . . . O'Brien does yeoman's work pulling together material from various sources for this complete overview . . . [R]eaders do see Kennedy evolve as a man and as a force in history. An up-to-date and substantial addition to the Kennedy shelves."—Booklist "O'Brien, a retired historian and biographer of Joe Paterno, Theodore Hesburgh, Philip Hart, Vince Lombardi, and Joseph McCarthy, is well qualified to tackle the subject of JFK as a legend and a man. His biography excels at putting both areas into perspective. Initially, historians mainly wrote sympathetic accounts of the slain President—of his youthful vigor, intelligence, and inspiration. A genuine World War II hero and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, JFK married the ultimate glamorous, intelligent woman and had photogenic children to match. These 'Camelot' accounts have since been challenged by revisionists who seemingly have cracked the veneer of style over substance in the life of a playboy and serial adulterer during his two years and ten months as President. Yet if many scholars now rank him as only an average president, the general public continues to view him as one of the greatest. Despite Kennedy's immaturity, he emerges here as an active and flexible politician, like other great Presidents. Rather than uncover new facts, O'Brien brings balance to the life of the fallen hero of the Cold War, which is the major contribution of his well-written and empathetic biography."—Library Journal