Rating: 
Summary: A true masterpiece
Review: Dallek has written a little over 700 pages of fascinating insight into the Kennedy presidency. It's important to note that Dallek has not written a "pro-Kennedy" book at all - he deals with JFK's affairs head on, as well as the incredible amount of medication that the president took not only to keep him alive, but to ameliorate his pain from back injuries, spastic colitis, Addison's Disease and other physical ailments. Particularly interesting in this masterful tome is Dallek's detailed writing on Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and JFK's marital infidelities. Where Dallek breaks new ground is his examination of JFK's medical records, and how JFK's extensive use of medication affected his life and also his decision making during his presidency. Dallek concludes, based on his seemingly thorough research, that the president's medication did not influence any important decision making. But, this is an issue that bears discussion and scholarly debate. Dallek's conclusions carry significant weight because JFK's medical records until recently were not made available to authors and scholars. This book will probably hold up as one of the best JFK biographies ever for many reasons - the best being its largely objective view based on the author's thorough research and interviews. I highly recommend this book for anyone even remotely interested in learning about JFK the man and his presidency.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful appraisal of a difficult & tragic administration
Review: Indeed, why another JFK biography? The answer of course is that good history writing is timeless and Robert Dallek writes good history. In this exemplary work, Dallek covers the life of JFK as it's never been covered before...relying on new information regarding JFK's medical history, Dallek pens a marvelous history while maintaining personal touch with his subject and the result is historical biography on a David McCullough level. John Kennedy's life of course has been the subject of much scrutinization and it is indeed rare when new information is unearthed. We learn how Kennedy and his family/associates hid his many ailments and how in spite of these he gains the highest political office in America. Dallek thus manages to shed JFK's character in a new light and, while still showing his many faults, adds another component to his already legendary reputation. Born into a life of privilege and intense sibling competition, the young JFK is no standout, mainly due to the effects that his parents had on him. His mother was surprisingly distant emotionally and his father fostered an incredibly difficult and competitive homelife that submerges him in his brother Joseph's shadow. We see an almost apathetic Jack going through the motions at the finest schools, while beginning to show the symptoms of his many ailments that trouble him for the rest of his life. JFK's military career is given a fresh look and we learn of the subterfuge on the part of his father to get him in the Navy as an officer. Dallek correctly points this out as the beginning of his father's almost maniacal control of his career and we see how JFK uses these opportunities to make a reputation for himself. He of course becomes a military hero with the rescue of his crew aboard PT-109 and garners a congressional election based on this feat. The Senate is his next goal and again his father (now giving JFK his full attention following the death of his son Joseph) uses his major influence and, more importantly, his monetary standing to push him over the edge. Dallek covers Kennedy's House and Senate record with balance and an astute eye towards actions that have little effect on legislation, but have major effect on his future political outlook. Also, at this point we see the disturbing trend in Kennedy's character for personal recklesness and careless behavior. Dallek attributes this initially to his emotional shunning as a child and the effect that his growing medical maladies have on his psyche...Kennedy shows an incredible fatalism even at this relatively early stage in life. The bulk of this work and the major focus of Dallek's analysis is of course Kennedy's Presidential term. The monolithic 1960 election victory over Richard Nixon and the initial stages of Camelot set the stage for the memorable Kennedy administration. Dallek uses his immense talent in describing the Bay of Pigs failure and Kennedy's subsequent political recovery. The Cold War competition escalates in legendary proportions as foreign issues such as Berlin, Cuba and the arms race with the Soviet Union top Kennedy's agenda. Dallek describes these in comprehensive, but also readable, detail from Kennedy's perspective and we get a true sense of the man and how he overcomes the towering restraints of this new job. Kennedy grows into the Presidency and creates his aura with his performance during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dallek uses the latest White House tape transcripts during this crisis and presents new scholarship and perspective that no JFK biography had until now. He shows how Kennedy managed the crisis while at the same time increasing his levels of dangerous medication. Indeed, we see Kennedy as attentive and cogent throughout while outshining even the "best and brightest" of his administration. The other important issues of JFK's Presidency are also placed under the Dallek microscope and we see Kennedy's sometimes brilliant, sometimes disappointing leadership through the burgeoning Civil Rights era, the economy and most importantly Vietnam. Dallek attempts to show evidence of Kennedy's thinking and concludes that he would not have let this war get out of hand. This is one of the most intruiging arguments of Kennedy's Presidency and Dallek gives thoughtful consideration to this and other issues that Kennedy would have faced in a second term. This is historical biography on a grand scale and Robert Dallek continues with and adds immensely to his his already large reputation with "An Unfinished Life". The prospective reader should not be disouraged from taking on this massive tome (about 700 pages) as it is incredibly readable and sheds much new information on the JFK Presidency. Above all else, Dallek shows us a new Kennedy...one of self deprication and faults while also intelligent and a legendary leader...this should be the definitive work on JFK's life for many years to come. Highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Insight into the Man and his Presidency
Review: Read this book! It is a taught, insider view of JFK the man and his administration. Prepared as I was to find this yet another tawdry tale of a compulsive womanizer who enjoyed hanging out with thugs and lied about life-threatening diseases, I came away with a deep respect for the man, with all his flaws. Dallek's tight structure begins with JFK's privileged youth -- always the number two son, of whom Joe Sr. expected little, through to the end of his administration. The distant Rose Kennedy offered little warmth, unlike Joe Sr., an emotional, demonstrable man, albeit a ruthless businessman with a Nazi flirtation and an obsessive ambition for his first son Joe Jr. After attending Harvard, winning a Pulitzer, and meandering through pre-war Europe, Kennedy joined up by pulling a few tricks and became a genuine war hero, though he could easily have avoided service with his multitudinous illnesses. He got himself into the Navy where he became a national hero with his famous PT 109 rescue in the Pacific, with a five-mile swim to flag a passing boat. Displaying his notorious insouciance at this heroism, he passed it off: "It was easy [to become a hero]. They cut my PT boat in half." He knew the horrors of war and kept us largely at peace during the coldest days of the Cold War. With the death of Joe Jr. flying a dangerous mission in Europe, Joe Sr. turned his ambitions to Jack. Few would argue this gaunt, almost sickly looking young man played any serious role in his terms in the Congress. But he defeated the popular Boston Brahman Henry Cabot Lodge against all odds and in 1960, with Bobby as campaign manager, narrowly defeated the odds-on favorite, Nixon, for the presidency. Joe Sr. had it all predestined from the time his sons were children. And he had the millions and connections to help put JFK over the top. Ultimately, Dallek captures a side of Kennedy and insider anecdotes that few knew then, or even now. JFK suffered very severe back problems, almost died, had Addison's disease, horrible gastrointestinal problems. Yet, as Dalleck carefully documents, JFK's use of various medications had no discernible effect on his judgment. Kennedy inherited a world of troubles, and he fumbled several times at the beginning. But, more importantly, in the mold of Lincoln, he possessed an uncanny capacity to learn, grow, and exercise restraint and wisdom. At over 800 pages (but a quick read), I won't go into all the details here. But what Dallek has offered us, and in lucid, compelling style, is the character of the man,imperfect as he was. Dallek's Lincolnesque eloquence puts it best:"[t]he Kennedy thousand days spoke to the country's better angels, inspired visions of a less divisive nation and world, and demonstrated that America was still the last best hope of mankind."
Rating: 
Summary: An Unfinished War
Review: An Unfinished War
Conjecture about JFK's Vietnam policy mars Dallek's otherwise solid biography By Adam Scheuer When John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on that fateful day in November of 1963, it is often argued, so too were hopes for an American withdrawal from Vietnam. Had Oswald missed and Kennedy lived, the theory goes, American troops would have been withdrawn from Vietnam by 1965 and the United States would have escaped the hopeless quagmire that, by its end, swallowed 58,000 American lives. It is a counterfactual theory that has been popularized by Oliver Stone's film, JFK, and by John M. Newman's book, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power, but neither of these works, inclined toward conspiracy theories, offered serious scholarship. Robert Dallek, a professor at Boston University, has now lent new credence to old conjecture with his treatment of the president's Vietnam policy in an exhaustive 812-page biography of Kennedy's life and presidency, An Unfinished Life. Unlike Stone and Newman's works, Dallek's is intricately researched, his citation of sources fully accurate, and his work scholarly, in most parts. But Dallek's conclusion that Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam earlier is no more correct that it was when Oliver Stone coupled it with rants about Cubans and "the Agency" over a decade ago. The flaw in An Unfinished Life's assessment of Kennedy's Vietnam policy lies not in Dallek's analysis of his sources but in his choice of a decidedly unbalanced array of legitimate sources. In most circumstances, Dallek depicts a Kennedy favoring withdrawal. But Kennedy was a shrewd politician with mixed feelings about Vietnam, and his internal tension is not fairly represented in this otherwise evenhanded biography. For each of Kennedy's dovish statements at news conferences and in the recorded private conversations recounted by Dallek, there is a corresponding hawkish one conspicuously absent from the biography. Dallek contends that Kennedy's actions and statements towards the end of his presidency "are suggestive of a carefully managed stand-down from the sort of involvement that occurred under LBJ". Dallek points to the National Security Council Action Memorandum 263 of Oct. 11, 1963, which called for a withdrawal of 1,000 troops by the end of 1963, as a possible first step towards total disengagement. However, Dallek does not focus sufficiently on the political forces that shaped this policy action. Kennedy did try to distance himself from Vietnam in his public rhetoric, but not because he considered the military effort futile. Rather, looking ahead to the 1964 election season, Kennedy was aware that the American media coverage of the Buddhist crisis and political repression in South Vietnam would present a political problem. Kennedy also hoped that the withdrawal-which was intended to have a minimal impact since only 1,000 troops out of 16,000 already in Vietnam would be effected-would stifle domestic criticism from such leftist congressmen as George McGovern of American involvement in the budding war. Dallek, however, makes no mention of such political pressure, instead focusing on criticism of the action by mainstream media outlets and by individual reporters, such as The New York Times's David Halberstam. Moreover, Dallek consistently fails to emphasize the optimistic projection underlying all withdrawal plans: that the war would be over and won by 1965. A more accurate assessment of the war could have changed the administration's outlook and reshaped Kennedy's policies. To be sure, as Kennedy gained confidence in his presidential abilities and foreign policy expertise, he was increasingly determined to resist the mounting pressure for an overt American military response in Vietnam. What's more, despite considerable concern about "losing Vietnam" from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Kennedy had a noted independence from his advisors that might have led him to respond differently than Johnson to the military deterioration in South Vietnam. Still, Kennedy had yet to make a final decision about America's involvement in Vietnam, and Dallek is mistaken in extrapolating Kennedy's freedom of action to determine an eventual decision to withdraw the military from Vietnam. Kennedy's independence from his advisors means only that Kennedy would not have been afraid of going against their advice, not that he would have come to different conclusions than they did about the war. The same stipulation applies to Kennedy's political freedom of action. Dallek rightly notes that after successfully facing down Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis of August 1962, and overcoming Soviet and Senate resistance to the test ban treaty: "Kennedy had much greater credibility as a defender of national security than Johnson had. It gave Kennedy more freedom to convince people at home and abroad that staying clear of large-scale military intervention in Vietnam was in the best interests of the United States." Kennedy's credibility as a leader, and the resulting political freedoms that ensued, were very real. But it is far from clear how Kennedy would have channeled his credibility. By unfairly presenting and then extrapolating from Kennedy's deliberations on Vietnam, An Unfinished Life makes an incomplete argument.
Rating: 
Summary: The Selling of the President
Review: Before I begin this review, I would like to state that I have enjoyed Dallek's work on LBJ but, unfortunately, I felt that in an 'Unfinished Life'that Dallek continued to glorify the 'Camelot' image of JFK. The most rewarding aspect of Dallek's work on LBJ is that he was able to balance the historical perspective by fighting back the 1960s perception of Johnson as a bigoted Texan responsible for Vietnam. While I want to believe that Kennedy was the great man that Dallek presents, I realistically cannot believe his conclusions. It is pretty much an historically known fact that'Profiles in Courage' was written by a ghost rider, that Kennedy did not work all that hard at Harvard, the he was basically a playboy official put into power by his dad, that his family was a master of dirty political tricks, he had connections to the mafia, he stole the 1960 election through massive voting fraud, he botched the Bay of Pigs by canceling the needed air cover which resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis(a crisis of his own making), bugged Martin Luther King to smear the Civil Rights movement, assasinated Ngo Dien Diem, Screwed up in Laos which led to Vietnam, and the list does not end. While Dallek helped exonerate LBJ to a degree, he has only added to the mythos of JFK and it is high time that the REAL JFK is examined. LBJ did more for poor people than any leader in the history of the U.S. But yet, they hate Johnson but love Kennedy...go figure.
Rating:
Summary: A Time for Greatness
Review: John Kennedy in his winning 1960 presidential campaign ran with an optimistic message, "A Time for Greatness." It emphasized the importance of dealing with problems confronting the nation at the beginning of a new decade, the most pressing being the Cold War and the military and economic challenges posed by the Soviet Union. Boston University history professor Robert Dallek captures the man and his era in the way that he had done with comparable panache in the case of the chief executive who followed Kennedy into the White House following his tragic assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson. Since so many books have been done on President Kennedy in recent years, the question that emerged was whether Dallek would be covering familiar ground previously traveled by other historians. Between the new material Dallek unearthed from Freedom of Information Act releases and the Kennedy Library in Boston, it becomes clear that there is indeed enough information that is new as well as fascinating to make this a "must read" for those interested in the Cold War period of America and the dynamic young man who held the presidency during a pivtotal segment, The term "unfinished life" relates to the fact that Kennedy was struck down before completing his first term at the age of 46 after having been the youngest person ever elected president (Theodore Roosevelt assumed the office at the age of 42 following William McKinley's assassination). When one reads about all that was experienced in Kennedy's life it is hard to conceive of such a life as unfinished, as well as to comprehend that he was only 46 when he died. So much had occurred that on the surface one, without foreknowledge, would otherwise surmise that Kennedy had died at a very old age. Two interesting elements revealed by Dallek concerning Kennedy's young adulthood stood out. Dallek writes that perhaps a major reason behind Kennedy's brother Joe's volunteering for a dangerous flying mission behind German lines, which cost him his life, was his natural competition with the brother who was two years his junior. Brother Jack had been saluted in the media as a hero following his PT boat excursion under challenging circumstances in the Pacific which saved the lives of crew mates. Dallek believes that this prompted Joe to take a chance of his own to garner hero status. Dallek notes that it was JFK's older, more extroverted brother who had been tapped by father Joseph Senior to become the nation's first Catholic president. The responsibility devolved upon Jack following his brother's death. JFK later stated that had his brother been in the identical position he was at the Democratic National Convention in 1956, when Senator Kennedy was narrowly beaten by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee for the party's vice-presidential nomination with Adlai Stevenson in what would eventually be a losing campaign against President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the tenacious Joe would have found a way to win. John Kennedy explained that the loss would have eliminated him from consideration in 1960. By losing narrowly and gracefully, the party had a dynamic new national face who, by 1960, had the support and vigor to capture the presidency. Dallek, with access to the most complete medical records currently available, writes about a man who barely had a pain free day in his life. The reader is left in awe over 1) the ability of Kennedy to conquer adversity, and 2) the success of the effort to remove such career destroying information from the public. With all the detailed personal information he has unearthed, Dallek has constructed JFK as a flesh and blood human being that one gets to know through the reading experience of this excellent biography. Another poignant segment is when Dallek details the period in 1961 when Kennedy, a young father, feels an acute measure of suffering after his tense 1961 summit meeting with Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, fearing the prospect of a nuclear conflict, depriving young people such as his children of experiencing life. Kennedy the peacemaker is correlated by Dallek alongside the vigilant Cold Warrior determined to prevent Khrushchev from realizing the triumph he proclaimed would be achieved by the Soviet Union. His account of America at the brink during the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 1962 gives readers a feel for what it would have been like to have been leader during such a tenuous moment of world history.
Rating:
Summary: Broader understanding of the man and the time
Review: The book, while at times bogging down, provides a broader insight and understanding of the man and the times during which he served than any previous work.
The revelations about his health are detailed as never before which adds to the "uncertainty" of his presidency. Health problems in the background, he was dealing with world tensions which, I believe, are not fully comprehended even today.
Robert Dallek does an excellent job of presenting not only the man, but critical and unbiased assessment of the dangers and fears we as a nation faced. Dallek avoids expressing "pity or sympathy" for Kennedy and instead holds him to a standard of competency and capability that should be the benchmark for any president faced with such dangerous possibilities while trying to maintain safety at home. Unfortunately, it fails to provide any "answers" as it claims to do. I came away with more questions.
After reading Robert Kennedy: His Life, there are critical discrepancies concerning the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the Kennedy adminstration involvement in it.
Dallek also goes into greater detail of Kennedy's fear of, and efforts to stop Communism in Central and South America which only adds "fodder to the fire" for those of us believing in conspiracy theories. Kennedy's attempt to destabilize "Castro Leaning" regimes is presented in much greater detail than ever before and can only serve as notice that those who "live by the sword" certainly open themself up to the possibility of "dying by the sword".
Rating:
Summary: JFK in the Hiz-ouuuuse!!!
Review: I am through about half of the book, and after having read some pretty one-sided things about JFK, and the well-balalnced "Profile in Power", I would have to say, so far, one of the best JFK biographies, indeed one of the best presidential biographies I have read is "Unfinished". No pun intended, er-a. dare mighty things
Rating:
Summary: Unfinished life but fuller than most.
Review: No one is asking you to feel sorry for the Kennedys. But they do deserve respect. Yes, they could have lived long lives and grown full heads of gray hair if they had gone "with the flow" but instead they were killed for standing up humanity.
Brave people truly live Life while alive, more so in one year than cowards do in a lifetime. "Speak not evil of the absent: it is unjust." ~George Washington
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Book About a Complex Man
Review: Robert Dallek has much to be proud of with the release of "An Unfinished Life." He is neither overly critical nor overly praiseworthy of Kennedy. In American culture, we like our heroes and villains clearly labeled - particularly in the dicey world of politics. Most public figures, however, are neither great heroes nor terrible villains. They are complex beings with good qualities and unfortunate flaws. Dallek portrays Kennedy as such. Kennedy is shown to be a shameless womanizer, but also a courageous fighter as he battled overwhelming health problems. Kennedy made foolish mistakes during the Bay of Pigs invasion, yet demonstrated remarkable wisdom and restraint during the Cuban missile crisis. He did more for civil rights than previous presidents, but refused to do all that leaders like Martin Luther King asked for fear of a political backlash. Part of Dallek's important study is unprecedented access to Kennedy's health records. Kennedy suffered from many ailments, including spastic colitis. He was given steroid injections for the colitis, but they did far more harm than good, causinng osteoperosis of Kennedy's lumbar spine. Kennedy also suffered from Addison's disease and other health problems. Dallek documents these well and puts them in the larger context of Kennedy's life. Despite Kennedy's flaws, one comes away from Dallek's important study believing Kennedy could have been a great president, had he been given the chance. His optimism and hope for the future seemed to outweigh his mistakes. I highly recommend reading this book as we approach the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination.
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