Rating: 
Summary: Family history
Review: An excellent account of the Kennedys from the beginnings up to 1984, when the book was written. This book gives you a blow-by-blow history of the family and the kids. I found it most interesting learning about the little known real story of Camelot. There has been so much written about the Kennedys but the authors did some serious research and told some never before written stories, such as the JFK's back problems and Rosemary's retardation, also stories about the Kennedy kids and their drug problems. Quite informative and thorough, this book is excellent history.
Rating:
Summary: Family history
Review: An excellent account of the Kennedys from the beginnings up to 1984, when the book was written. This book gives you a blow-by-blow history of the family and the kids. I found it most interesting learning about the little known real story of Camelot. There has been so much written about the Kennedys but the authors did some serious research and told some never before written stories, such as the JFK's back problems and Rosemary's retardation, also stories about the Kennedy kids and their drug problems. Quite informative and thorough, this book is excellent history.
Rating: 
Summary: Take a Shower After Reading
Review: Collier and Horowitz are fine writers and thorough researchers. That said, this is an awful book. It tells a depressing, tragic and demoralizing story of a dysfunctional family that destroys its members and those that touch them. Why is America so fascinated with this family? Because JFK and his generation were beautiful and charismatic. What lurks beneath the veneer is disgusting. In the end, this book may perform a great national service. We may finally understand that the Kennedys and their faux idealism are to be pitied rather than emulated. The book makes the point early and often. Prospective readers should not waste any more time on this freakish family. Instead read David McCullough's "Truman" and learn why honesty, hard work, humility, honor and courage count for more than looks and a rich daddy.
Rating: 
Summary: A "Warts-And-All" Look at America's "Royal Family"
Review: I disagree with what BOTH of the reviewers below have written about this book. In my opinion, "The Kennedys" doesn't fairly or unfairly "bash" the Kennedys - it just tells the story of this remarkable New England family as it really was - without the hype, romanticism, or nitpicking that their critics and admirers have done to them over the years. Relying upon extensive interviews (some of which had never been done until Collier and Horowitz did them) this book starts out by telling of the rise to fame and fortune of the "Founding Father", Joseph P. Kennedy (1888-1969). It was "old Joe" who ruthlessly yet cleverly built the family's vast fortune, and did so by bootlegging whiskey during Prohibition, making early Hollywood films (and having a not-so-secret extramarital affair with the actress Gloria Swanson, which his wife ignored), and other legal and not-so-legal methods. Horowitz and Collier were among the first biographers of the Kennedy family to point out Joe's almost-complete domination of his male children, and his relentless pressure on them to excel, to "win" at everything they did, even if it was just a "friendly" sailboat race. The Kennedys were never supposed to lose at anything, and Joe made his large family into a kind of tribal, "us-against-them" clan with its' own rules and traditions. The middle section of the book follows the Kennedy boys as they attempt to fulfill their father's expections. Some encounter tragedy, such as the family's "golden boy" Joe, Jr. who was killed in a suicidal mission over England in World War Two. JFK and Bobby then enter politics and the familiar "Camelot" story is exposed as the sometimes-successful, sometimes-not affair that it really was. The final section of the book generated the most controversy, yet this third section may be among the most poignant and devastating pages ever written on the Kennedys or the American obsession with "success". This section focuses on the latest generation of Kennedys - the children and grandchildren of Joe, JFK, Bobby, and Teddy. Over their parent's strong objections, Horowitz and Collier did interviews with many of these "survivors" of the terrible tragedies which had befallen their fathers and uncles. What they found was that the third generation of the Kennedy dynasty had been left leaderless (and parentless) by the older generation's deaths. Some had been in trouble with the law, some were addicted to drugs (such as David, who overdosed on cocaine in a hotel room in 1984, not long before this book was published). Collier and Horowitz paint a devastating portrait of young men and women who go through the motions of being "good Kennedys" but who have grown tired of living in a glass house and are both bemused and cynical of the family "business" (politics) that they are expected to take part in. Several of these people are running for political office next year (2002), or will be in the next few years, and although many years have passed since the book was released, the stories in this final section should give any voter concerns about electing anymore Kennedys into public office. Collier and Horowitz are especially effective in showing how the actions of one generation haunted the younger generation which followed them. As one of the younger Kennedys the authors interviewed in 1983 told them: "I keep asking myself what was it in my grandfather that made him push the family so hard and cause us all such tragedy"? Far from being a "hatchet job" on the Kennedys or a sappy, admiring biography such as Doris Kearns Goodwins "The Kennedys: An American Saga", this book by Collier and Horowitz tells the story of our greatest political dynasty as it really was, with no blinders, rose-colored glasses, or fairy tales. An excellent, thought-provoking book.
Rating:
Summary: Way awesome. Interesting, heartbreaking, and well-researched
Review: I never really cared about the Kennedys before I read this book. I cried on certain stories, especially David Kennedy's. What makes the Kennedy "dramas" so heartbreaking is the fact they're real.
A lot of Kennedys and their friends were interviewed for this book, so it's all the more interesting. Chris Lawford, Bobby Jr., David Kennedy, etc., and their old girlfriends and friends tell tales of misadventures and personal heartaches. Go buy it. =)
Rating:
Summary: A "Warts-And-All" Look at America's "Royal Family"
Review: Peter Collier and David Horowitz have done their homework in creating this candid portrait of the Kennedy family. Written with neither malice nor favoritism, this book is about as honest a look at the Kennedy family as one can buy. As they write well, it was a pleasure to read (with photographs and a family tree included, too).
Rating:
Summary: Candid, thoroughly researched look at the Kennedys
Review: Peter Collier and David Horowitz have done their homework in creating this candid portrait of the Kennedy family. Written with neither malice nor favoritism, this book is about as honest a look at the Kennedy family as one can buy. As they write well, it was a pleasure to read (with photographs and a family tree included, too).
Rating: 
Summary: Replaces the Camelot Myth with the Sham-a-lot Myth
Review: There are few books that are as overpraised as this piece of trash. At the time it was published in the mid-1980s, few reviewers noted that the authors were leftists-turned-virulent-rightwingers. Today they have their own think tank on popular culture, which is in large part financed by paranoid billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Their bias is evident on every single page.What is known about the Kennedys is often very unpleasant. What Horowitz and Collier do, however, is take the unpleasant aspects (including a morbid obsession with JFK's sex life), magnify them 100 fold, but ignore all the good the family has tried to achieve in public service. Worse, still, they fail totally as historians in trying to help readers understand the significance of the Kennedys, particularly during the 1960s. If they are nothing but a bunch of arrogant, crooked bastards, why does America still hold them in high regard? That's because the truth is far more complicated than this garbage would have us believe. This book is surely one of the worst biographies ever written.
Rating:
Summary: The Kennedys: True to Form
Review: This book is by far one of the most telling stories about the Kennedy dynasty I have ever read. Having read Thomas Reeves profile of Jack Kennedy in "A Question of Character" I found that "The Kennedy's" gives much more information on the inner workings of the Kennedy family. I especially enjoy the stories of old Joe Kennedy, how he made his fortunes, and his political power. The book is very well done, and I recommend everyone interested in politics, real politics, to read.
Rating:
Summary: The Kennedys: True to Form
Review: This book is by far one of the most telling stories about the Kennedy dynasty I have ever read. Having read Thomas Reeves profile of Jack Kennedy in "A Question of Character" I found that "The Kennedy's" gives much more information on the inner workings of the Kennedy family. I especially enjoy the stories of old Joe Kennedy, how he made his fortunes, and his political power. The book is very well done, and I recommend everyone interested in politics, real politics, to read.
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