As Matthews writes: "I found a fighting prince never free of pain, never far from trouble, never accepting the world he found, never wanting to be his father's son. Matthews's extraordinary biography is based on personal interviews with those closest to JFK, oral histories by top political aide Kenneth O'Donnell and others, documents from his years as a student at Choate, and notes from Jacqueline Kennedy's first interview after Dallas. We watch JFK as a young politician learning to play hardball and watch him grow into the leader who averts a nuclear war. We witness his bravery in war and selfless rescue of his PT boat crew. We watch him navigate his life from privileged, rebellious youth to gutsy American president. We see and feel him close-up, having fun and giving off that restlessness of his. We see this most beloved president in the company of friends. What was he like, this man whose own wife called him "that elusive, unforgettable man?" In this New York Times bestselling biography, Chris Matthews answers that question with the verve of a novelist. (Nov."What was he like?" Jack Kennedy said the reason people read biography is to answer that basic question. Matthews’s stirring biography reveals Kennedy as a “fighting prince never free from pain, never far from trouble, and never accepting the world he found.” Photos. With this resolve, Kennedy reacted to Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis with a detachment that resisted the easy path of war that others recommended. For example, from the Bay of Pigs-considered one of Kennedy’s failures-JFK learned that there must be both clarity and completion when the stakes are highest and most desperate know your enemy and your goal and hold fast to what you’re attempting. Drawing on interviews with friends and former staffers, as well as on such familiar biographical incidents as Kennedy’s rescue of the PT-109 crew and his resulting back injury, Matthews reveals a man who through inner direction and tenacious will created himself out of the loneliness and illness of his youth and who taught himself the hard discipline of politics through his own triumphs and failures. He begins this book wanting to discover how Kennedy became the leader who, at a moment of national fear and anger (the Cuban missile crisis), could cut so coldly and clearly to the truth. Out of his gut interest in politics and love of reading biographies of American heroes, Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, probes the details of the 35th president’s life and career to find out what Jack was like.
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