Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye (Epub)

Description

Bare-knuckle operative, cynical White House insider, romantic visionary—Robert F. Kennedy was all of these things at one time or another, and each of these aspects of his personality emerges in the pages of this powerful and perceptive biography.

History remembers RFK as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight of a bygone era of American politics. But Kennedy’s enshrinement in the liberal pantheon was actually the final stage of a journey that began with his service as counsel to the red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. In Bobby Kennedy, Larry Tye peels away layers of myth and misconception to capture the full arc of his subject’s life. Tye draws on unpublished memoirs, unreleased government files, and fifty-eight boxes of papers that had been under lock and key for forty years. He conducted hundreds of interviews with RFK intimates, many of whom have never spoken publicly, including Bobby’s widow, Ethel, and his sister, Jean. Tye’s determination to sift through the tangle of often contradictory opinions means that Bobby Kennedy will stand as the definitive biography about the most complex and controversial member of the Kennedy family.

User’s Reviews

Review “We are in Larry Tye’s debt for bringing back to life the young presidential candidate who . . . for a brief moment, almost half a century ago, instilled hope for the future in angry, fearful Americans.”—David Nasaw, The New York Times Book Review“A multilayered, inspiring portrait of RFK . . . [Tye] provides readers and historians their most in-depth look at an extraordinary figure whose transformational story shaped America.”—Joe Scarborough, The Washington Post“A compelling story of how idealism can be cultivated and liberalism learned . . . Tye does an exemplary job of capturing not just the chronology of Bobby’s life, but also the sense of him as a person.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Captures RFK’s rise and fall with straightforward prose bolstered by impressive research.”—USA Today “[Tye] has a keen gift for narrative storytelling and an ability to depict his subject with almost novelistic emotional detail.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Nuanced and thorough . . . [RFK’s] vision echoes through the decades.”—The Economist “Tye’s pages on the assassination are heart-wrenching.”—New York Post“It captures RFK’s cold, ruthless side with appropriate relish, and it provides fast-paced and very detailed accounts of RFK’s early working relationship with soon-to-be-disgraced politician Joe McCarthy.”—The Christian Science Monitor“Tye’s vivid journalistic style makes the biography an arresting read. . . . Many of the most fascinating stories come through Tye’s dissection of Bobby’s relations with his adversaries.”—San Francisco Chronicle“This is not just another Bobby Kennedy book. It is the definitive biography of one of America’s most compelling political figures. Larry Tye has given us the complete Bobby, from the Bad (Early) Kennedy to the Good (Later) Kennedy, from Joe McCarthy’s committee counsel to ‘ruthless’ political manager to gentle, softhearted presidential candidate. Tye’s book rests on prodigious and original research, including rare, on-the-record interviews with Bobby’s widow, Ethel, who confesses that seeing Bobby for the first time was like meeting George Clooney.”—Roger Mudd, winner of the Peabody Award and former co-anchor of NBC Nightly News “Robert Kennedy led one of the great unfinished lives in American history. With skill and verve, Larry Tye has written a fascinating account of a transformative figure who continues to summon us to heed our better angels even all these years distant.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Drawing on the personal papers and insights of the Kennedy family, this biography will appeal not only to those wanting a portrait of a dynamic idealist, but also to those seeking to understand the emotions of the times in which he lived.”—Henry A. Kissinger

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I have read previous books on Robert Kennedy and found them all interesting but I feel this one is the definitive biography of the man. Author Larry Tye gives a well-balanced portrayal of the man showing both his so-called ruthless side with other politicians and his compassionate side with children and the poor. I suppose to have lived through the tumultuous 1960s and well remember many of the times and trials this decade put American through would make this book somewhat more memorable. Bobby Kennedy was a strong supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin during the witch hunt for Communists during the early 1950s. The drive of father Joseph Kennedy to get his oldest surviving son Jack elected president is covered. The bitter feud between Attorney General RFK and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson suddenly left the Attorney General insignificant in Johnson’s eyes. Bobby’s friend Richard Goodwin has said that if LBJ had to choose between RFK and Ho Chi Minh to succeed him as president he’d choose Ho without hesitation. Another archfoe was Clyde Tolson, friend of J. Edgar Hoover, who had stated, “I hope someone shoots and kills that son of a bitch.”RFK had many enemies but he had his compassionate side as well and author Tye provides us this side, also.. Following the assassination of JFK his brother went into a deep depression which eventually subsided with RFK’s run for Senator of New York and later for President of the United States. His travels took him to the deep south and Indian reservations where poverty reigned. Kennedy’s sincere compassion deeply affected him to wanting to do something for these people.Robert Kennedy’s words from the 1960s ring equally true today when he stated that what we need today is not division, hatred, violence, or lawlessness but love, wisdom, and compassion for one another. It appears we haven’t learned very much if anything. Unfortunately his life was taken by an assassin just like his brother’s.I learned a lot from this book and I’m sure I’d learn more if I read it again. Well done oh good and faithful servant.

⭐ Like the author Larry Tye I have over 300 books on the Kennedy family. I am pretty cynical about any newer ones because most of them rely on sources that are despicable—C David Heymann’s “A Woman Named Jackie” (for example) and the others about the Kennedy family that he wrote, sold for millions of dollars were found to be stuffed with lies. So I was cautious with this book until I started reading it, footnotes and all, and became very excited. Mr. Tye does a great job of synthesizing previous works on RFK, but he had the cooperation of Ethel Kennedy and some of her children in getting the pieces of Senator Kennedy’s life put together accurately. Bobby, as Mrs. Kennedy still calls him, was a complex, struggling person from his childhood on to his adult life. That is made clear; no holding back of his temper, his frustration, his adversarial behaviors which his colleagues, friends, enemies and family discuss clearly. But the growth which occurs in him as he runs the campaigns for JFK’s senate and presidential offices is also ignited in the book. Confidence and extremely hard work give him the maturity and gravitas to be trusted with the DOJ.Of course the murder of his brother shattered him. We have read before about his grief, but now there are enlightening stories from Ethel and his friends which show just how drenched in pain he was. The burden he took on of being the leader of a sorrowful family while he was enduring a sadness beyond description is evidenced here. Mr. Tye handles it so eloquently. This loss in his life had its own part in making RFK a compassionate man, brought him to be able to speak with soaring belief in the goodness of man on the night Martin Luther King died. His final campaign, in 1968, allowed the entire country to see how he had evolved. Had he lived there is every chance this world might be a better place.The author of this book deserves praise for his beautiful writing, his determination to be objective, his ability to serve the trust of Ethel Kennedy as she shared her thoughts, which she does not do often or easily. I really, really loved this book.

⭐ I was a cub reporter when Bobby was a Senator. In some ways I simply trailed his political and moral development by a few years, shaped by many of the same forces. So this well-written, well-researched book is a kind of memoir of, a tribute to, a time in America that I recall vividly, a time of a nation’s great hopes, great struggles, and great sorrows. Tye has taken RFK’s personal evolution, traced its roots, the forces that molded and re-molded this complex man, and the emotional and political forces that led him, like a shooting star, through the constellation of these hopes and griefs. I’ve always believed the nation would have been a better place had someone stayed Sirhan’s hand. Yet I can see now, after reading this book, that many of the people who were touched by Bobby’s ambition, determination and moral compass, have stayed on to help make changes for the better. Even after his death, RFK’s vision has helped alter our course. Tye has carefully taken a tragedy of Shakespearean — even Greek — proportions and made it human and tangible and honest.

⭐ Bobby Kennedy has been a personal hero of mine for years. I was in San Francisco celebrating his win in California. We were all over at the Red Garter yukking it up and consoling the McCarthy supporters when we heard the news of Bobby’s shooting. We stayed up all night and learned he had died in the morning, We lost a great person.I love this book because it doesn’t sugar coat or gloss over any of Bobby’s faults or mistakes. It is very informative about the times; and I learned some things I had not known before. If you were ever an RFK admirerer, or want to learn about a great man, read this book.If you can locate any of his great speeches online, it’s worth the time to listen.

⭐ Outstanding political biography of the complicated Robert F. Kennedy. Larry Tye had what appears to be unprecedented access to RFK’s widow and he has gone deep into primary sources to flesh out his portrait of the man who may have been the most elusive of the Kennedy brothers. Tye paints a compelling picture of Kennedy’s transition from Joseph McCarthy staffer to his brother’s attorney general to liberal icon. You are left with a nagging sense of “what if” – what if Bobby Kennedy had lived beyond 1968? Would his passion and commitment to ending hunger and poverty been more widely embraced? Would the U.S. tragedy in Vietnam ended sooner? Would our politics be different?Highly recommended for anyone looking for insights into 1950s and 1960s political history. This is political biography at its very best.

⭐ A staggering and lucid exploration of the life of Bobby Kennedy. A recent parole hearing before the California Parole Board for Sirhan Sirhan took a new turn when Paul Shrade, a 91-year-old labor leader advocated parole for Sirhan. He pointed to Sirhan and called for parole. Schrade said he was present with Bobby and that Sirhan shot him, but could not have shot Bobby. He said that Sirhan was in front of Kennedy, and that Kennedy was shot in the back of his head making it impossible for Sirhan to have fired the shot. This makes it more of an imperative to understand Bobby Kennedy, and why this made him a target for assassination.

⭐ Much of what is written in Larry Tye’s new book about Bobby Kennedy has been told before but I did find it worth remembering that RFK’s early public life revolved around Senator Joseph McCarthy…indeed that Kennedy had worked for and evidently admired the Wisconsin senator. And even when he became Attorney General, Bobby was more of a hard-liner than many people know. It wasn’t until well after JFK’s assassination that the younger Kennedy began to distance himself more and more from Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam and establish his own credentials as a burgeoning liberal…the Kennedy that most of us remember…or would like to.There are some wonderful anecdotes, many of them concerning Ethel Kennedy…the fun one of the family. “Bobby Kennedy” is a walk down memory lane for some of us but a solid enough book to recommend, especially for those who are too young to recall his short life.

⭐ Stringing key events of Bobby Kennedy’s life tougher, Larry Tye succeeds in what is most important: capturing the essence of Bobby Kennedy as a person. It is no easy task to show how RFK, who once served under Communist hunter Joe McCarthy morphed into a liberal icon, but the author succeeds in making this a credible transformation. Through all the major turns in RFK’s life: the death of his siblings, his tenure as Attorney General, his stint in the Senate and his bid for the presidency, the author elevates Bobby Kennedy the man over Bobby Kennedy the politician. Simply written, brilliant in its insights and finely nuanced in its analysis, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon succeeds in being a top-class biography because readers really come away from this biography feeling that they know RFK. The ending is perfect.

⭐ I’ve read both Arthur Schlesinger’s and Evan Thomas’ biographies of Robert Kennedy and enjoyed them both. But I think Tye’s biography is the best of the three. Schlesinger wrote his in the mid 70s and it is the most scholarly and comprehensive of the three. But Schlesinger was not critical of Kennedy who he worked for and admired greatly. Thomas did a better job of exploring what made Kennedy tick but he didn’t have the same access Tye had to the remaining confidants of RFK who would be 90 if he was still alive. Just the insight of Ethel Kennedy made reading this book worthwhile.There are no saints who are successful in politics. Robert Kennedy was successful in politics. To be successful he had to make compromises and do things I’m sure he detested doing like appointing racists to the federal bench to appease southern Democratic senators and letting J. Edgar Hoover bug MLK Jr.More interesting is the analysis of how RFK transformed from a devotee of Joe McCarthy to a presidential candidate who broke bread with Cesar Chavez and quoted a Greek philosopher to an inner city Indianapolis crowd the night King was killed. The cynic would say he simply did what he needed to make himself more politically viable. That ignores the fact that Kennedy made himself less electable by moving to the left. The smart move would have been to stay in the middle, appease LBJ and wait till Johnson served two terms or was defeated in 68, then run in 1972 as the heir to his brother. Instead Kennedy alienated large parts of JFK’s base by breaking with Johnson on Vietnam and then alienated the left by waiting till after Gene McCarthy’s close loss in New Hampshire to enter the 68 race. A race he had very little chance of winning.What this book shows is that despite being a consummate politician who did make compromises with his beliefs RFK was also driven in more instances than most politicians to do what he believed was right even when that was not expedient. Whether that was defending Republican McCarthy long after McCarthy’s star had fallen or embracing Chavez’s farm workers and Native Americans even though neither group could help him much politically.Where are those politicians today?

⭐ This is a great book about RFK which I highly recommend. I have read around 15 about Bobby Kennedy, finding his story so fascinating that I always enjoy a good book about him. At this point I feel as though I know everything there is to know and so I am not easily impressed. This book does the subject justice which is what the author intended to do. He interviewed many of RFK’s friends and colleagues in the process.Most of what Larry Tye tells us has been written before but he does an excellent job of taking the reader thru Bobby’s life and his political career in particular.I was pleasantly surprised and glad to have purchased this book.

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