Rating: 
Summary: REMEMBERING WHAT WAS LOST
Review: When my son was about 20, the two of us saw Oliver Stone's JFK. This semi-hysterical film, based on the theories of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, posited a conspiracy in the death of President Kennedy. My son asked me about the film's historicity. I replied that I doubted its historical veracity, but that it caused me to remember what was lost when President Kennedy died. "The assassin," I said, "stole our future from us." As a 57-year-old male European-American, I certainly believe that the history of the past forty years would have been different had President Kennedy lived. Robert Dallek helped me to understand why I feel that way, and that's one of the marks of great biography. Americans who were not yet born in 1965 cannot always understand the catastrophe that was Vietnam. It changed America in fundamental ways, prolonging the Cold War, dividing the country in equally fundamental ways, paving the way for the radical Republicanism that now dominates our foreign and domestic policy. Kennedy saw the seeds of all three things in the bitterly divisive debate over Vietnam occurring in his administration in 1963. It caused him to lament that his government was coming apart. Dallek convinces me that, had Kennedy returned alive from Dallas, the President would have ended American involvement in Vietnam. A second way Dallek touches me is in his description of the role of West Virginia in the 1960 campaign. For decades, I had assumed that Daddy Joe's money bought the state for JFK, an assumption (erroneously) repeated by several of these reviewers. The President himself said, "I owe my presidency to the people of West Virginia." Dallek demonstrates that the situation was at once more simple and more complicated. The unique nature of West Virginia politics, which turns on the "slate" system, encourages candidates to "spread money around." When I was a pastor in WV, the richest (and most troublesome) man in the congregation was married to the daughter of the former sheriff of our county. She was the one with the money, because her father had collected (and kept) money from candidates who wished to be placed on the slate in our county. The Kennedys understood this system and used it better than their opponents, but that doesn't mean they "bought" the election. The President meant that WV had proven that a Catholic candidate could win in a predominantly Protestant state. In the Acknowledgements, Dallek thanks his son and daughter for showing him the things younger Americans need to know in order to appreciate the Kennedy presidency. The lasting value of Dallek's biography, I believe, will be its ability to instruct such citizens in their own history--that there once was a time when presidents thought less of re-election and more of statesmanship, in which war, particularly nuclear war, was considered abhorrent, in which the notion of impeaching a president for sexual dalliances was laughable, in which personal courage and fortitude trumped political correctness. If this is a definition of Camelot, then I say, "bring it on."
Rating: 
Summary: Read Reeves Instead
Review: I'll spare the usual synopsis that accompanies most reviews and offer a bit of advice instead: read this book until you reach JFK's election to the presidency then read Richard Reeves' "President Kennedy: Profile of Power." It's much more authoritative, in depth, and readable.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent work
Review: The nine-hour abridged Audible version provided good coverage of JFK's early life, wartime heroics, congressional career, and Cuban and Vietnam policies, without the typical sensationalizing usually found in JFK bios. The author also brought to light some very interesting facts such as JFK's health adversities and fiscal conservatism. I expected to hear more on the relationship with LBJ, but after all, it was an abridged version.
Rating:
Summary: The best JFK biography that has ever been written!
Review: Robert Dallek's epic biography, AN UNFINISHED LIFE: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, portrays the life of the 35th president of the United States in award-winning fashion. Dallek, a professor at Boston University, spent five years of extensive research to produce this tremendous biography. Not only did Dallek unearth Kennedy's own tryst with a White House intern (which recently made national headlines), he also reveals Kennedy's use of numerous prescription drugs during his turbulent life to battle the multitude of inflictions that ravished his body since early childhood. While it isn't breaking news today, Dallek also presents the fact that Kennedy, like his father, delved deep into adultery. Dallek concludes that Kennedy's numerous affairs could be blamed on his mother Rose's inept upbringing of their second of nine children. Dallek makes several references to Kennedy's torrid appetite for sex and its correlation with a neglectful mother, with which I tend to disagree. JFK lived a pampered life --- before and after his service in the US Navy during World War II --- as the member of a prominent Boston family. Extremely good looking, Kennedy was the quintessential playboy and, as Dallek shows, used his power in politics before and during his presidency to attract his female suitors. In the mid-1950s, after Kennedy defeated Henry Cabot Lodge, the crucial gears towards the presidency were put into place as JFK left Congress and became a senator. Dallek illustrates numerous examples during this time of the tremendous build-up of the Kennedy political machine, constructed from his father's fortune. Interestingly enough, Dallek also examines how Kennedy's father did all he could and used all of his financial muscle to not only get his son elected as senator, but also to have the nation embrace the first ever Irish-Catholic candidate for the office of the presidency of the United States. Possibly one of the most interesting and stark examinations of Dallek's biography is the involvement JFK's father had in his son's political career. It is also worth mentioning the poignant fact that the author reveals how the death of JFK's older brother Joe during a botched bombing run in World War II eventually paved the way for the younger brother's political career. Kennedy's road to the White House in 1960, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs incident, Vietnam --- it's all here in Dallek's excellent presentation of JFK's legendary and tragic 1,000 days in office. Being a Boston native and a journalist, I grew up on all the nostalgia of the Kennedy legacy and "Camelot" that was left behind after that fatal day in Dallas in 1963. Now, nearly 40 years since Kennedy was shot to death and as "The New Frontier" came to a halt, Dallek pushes aside all the myths surrounding JFK and presents his subject like a true historian. Despite Dallek's earlier assumption about Kennedy's mother, AN UNFINISHED LIFE should be considered the finest biography ever written about the slain statesman. --- Reviewed by David Exum
Rating:
Summary: Finds it own niche in the JFK library
Review: I liked this book for many reasons, but two stick out. First, I echo the points of other readers by saying this is the most balanced book on JFK's life I've read. It's clear the author admires Kennedy, but for the right reasons -- his struggle in the face of enormous physical ailments and his strong instincts with regard to foreign policy. Second, while the book is quite long and can get dry, I thought Dallek focused a lot of his time on information that hadn't been published before, or at least not published in as much detail. Meanwhile, he showed restraint on some of the items that had been covered voluminously by others. For example, his coverage of the campaign of 1960 is extensive, but the election gets only a page or two. That was fine with me, as I've read Theodore White's excellent book and others that covered the subject. Same with the assassination. You could build a library on books about that topic, so Dallek includes some basic information on Oswald and acknowledges the conspiracy theorists and moves on to a more interesting subject -- JFK's legacy and potential should he have made it to a second term. I recently read "John Adams," and, while this book wasn't quite the page-turner that Adams was, it was still enjoyable and well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: a fairly good biography
Review: An unfinished life is a fairly good biography.
I think that the author tells not enough about JFK's youth.
Sometimes it's very boring and not interesting.
There are some strange affirmations, because the author invents them.
The people who knew him ( like Sorensen, Schlessinger..) says not this affirmations but often the opposite.
The author tells nothing about his relation with his wife and children.
The author tells more about Kennedy's politic than the man and that's harm.
He tells once about jfk jr and tree times about Caroline!
The best part of the book are the pictures, there isn't a lot but some are rare.
I don't recommended it. I suggest you if you want a very complete biography: Kennedy by Sorensen, The fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. And if you want a short biography:
young Jfk...
Rating:
Summary: Almost 40 years later and finally a fresh perspective
Review: Excellent, impartial and factual. Not another book designed to deify nor degrade JFK. As Joe Friday says "Just the facts Maam".
Rating:
Summary: What if?
Review: The fall of the Soviet Union and the resulting availability of Soviet archives to researchers have brought about several new studies of the cold war and its leading figures. This book is an excellent example of the new insights to be gained by a more through understanding of what the Soviet leadership, in this case Khrushchev and company, were thinking. For a biography like this however, new Soviet material, while important, is not enough. Any author who chooses to write about JFK must not only deal with the cold war, but also civil rights, Lyndon Johnson, Boston politics, George Wallace, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., and even Richard Nixon. Robert Dallek has done a wonderful job of sorting through tons of material on the above subjects and much more to bring the Kennedy brothers and their era to life. I say the Kennedy brothers because no study of JFK could possibly be complete without a close look at his brothers. At first Jack's life is dominated by competition with his elder brother Joe, Jr. At home, in school, and in the military Jack was expected to live up to his brother's example. A task the future President was not up to. The strong and healthy Joe, Jr. always seemed to be better than Jack at most everything and their father actually seems to have been angry with Jack when he got sick. Dallek points out over and over that Joe and Rose Kennedy were not ideal parents. After Joe, Jr. was killed in WWII Jack became the heir apparent to his father's political ambitions for his eldest son. It was during one of his early campaigns that Jack grew close to Bobby. Bobby Kennedy does not come off well in this book. He appears to be a spoiled, ill tempered, bully who yells at anyone who doesn't agree with him. Given his later stands it is amazing to see RFK as far more belligerent toward the USSR than his brother. In fact, at one point during an international crisis the author states that the U.S. and the world were lucky that JFK was president instead of RFK. Still, it is obvious that President Kennedy put much faith in his brother and often used him as the bad guy. Jack himself did not take criticism or opposition well; often referring to any whom opposed his view as a SOB. But still, he was a much better sport than Bobby was. Dallek has put together a highly readable and well-researched volume. He is clearly impressed by his subject but does not hesitate to point out Jack's failures, and there were several. JFK was in fact much more interested in foreign policy than domestic policy and seems to have been very much led in his decisions by polls. He really did not become much of a leader in either category until the Cuban missile crisis, which seems to have given him more confidence. He never really, for example, offered any leadership on civil rights until 1963 and even then the rich boy from New England never really could understand the dynamics in play. He had never really been around blacks and had problems relating to them, while at the same time never grasping the attitudes of white southerners. Worse, since Bobby couldn't stand LBJ, Kennedy never really used his Vice-President much, even though as a southerner Johnson was very familiar with the problems. Dallek has not pulled any punches and his criticism of Kennedy's civil rights record shows it as does his detailing of Jack's health problems and womanizing. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and after seeing the changes in Kennedy after October 1962 I can't help wonder: what if? Unfortunately, the same question apparently occurred to Dallek who ends his book by trying to assess how successful JFK might have been in a second term. As I said before, Dallek deserves high praise for his objectivity through out the rest of this book, but at the end his objectivity falters. The book ends basically assuming that Congress would have passed all of Kennedy's second term proposals, Castro would have become the best friend America ever had, the Vietnam war would have just gone away, and the Soviets would have behaved admirably. While all of this is possible, it is not likely and the credibility of the whole book suffers as Dallek himself falls victim to the very Kennedy aura he has been trying to explain.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting
Review: I'm not quite finished with this book yet. It's not one you can sit and read for hours on end. But it contains a lot of interesting information and jogs your memory of JFK's years in the White House. I was only in the eighth grade when he was gunned down, and while reading of the events of that time, I realized that I was more aware of those current events than I remembered. Names, especially came back; names that meant very nearly nothing to me as an adolescent. I think Dallek really overindulged in minute details of every detail of Kennedy's decision making processes. I was also surprised in reading about significant events such as Kennedy's bid to lower taxes in the early sixties. Sounds Republican to me! I also remember that my dad was laid off and on unemployment when he was elected! I'm not so much interested in the gossip surrounding his administration, but his health problems being covered up was a revelation that, if a president nowadays glossed over, would be in the news and questioned to the extreme!
Rating:
Summary: Balanced and readable
Review: This book has sensational words on Kennedy's health, and does not hesitate to say bad things about JFK. But Dallek also has good things to say. I found the book easy to read and I think it is probably the best balanced biography of Kennedy that has been written so far. Its account of the Cuban missile crisis is chilling, and shows we all owe JFK a big debt of gratitude for his avoidance of nuclear war in that time of great danger. There are some mistakes in the book and I will note those I noticed, which can be corrected in the next printing: On page 188 LBJ is referred to as majority leader in 1954, but he did not become majority leader till 1955. On page 236 it is stated that in the 1958 elections the Democrats made a 28-seat gain in the Senate, which of course is false. It was a gain of about 12 seats. On page 267 Dallek says Bryan in 1908 chose an 84-year-old man as his vice-presidential rnnning mate, but Bryan's running mate in 1908 was John Worth Kern, age 59. On page 269 Dallek says Symington was too young to be acceptable as JFK's vice-presidential candidate in 1960! Symington was 59, older than the two men (Nixon and Lodge) on the 1960 Republican ticket.
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