Product Description

President Kennedy is the compelling, dramatic history of JFK's thousand days in office. It illuminates the presidential center of power by providing an indepth look at the day-by-day decisions and dilemmas of the thirty-fifth president as he faced everything from the threat of nuclear war abroad to racial unrest at home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #89290 in Books
• Published on: 1994-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780671892890
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
According to Reeves, Kennedy had little ideology. "And he had less emotion. What he had was attitude . . . ." Based on hundreds of interviews and close study of presidential papers and telephone transcripts, New Yorker writer Reeves ( Reagan Detour ) traces JFK's thoughts and actions through his nearly three years as president. No previous profile has included as many details on how he dealt with the Bay of Pigs, the conflict with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis, Southeast Asia and other foreign policy issues. On the domestic front, Reeves offers fresh material about JFK's equivocating initial response to the civil rights movement and the bold decision to integrate Southern universities that followed. Nor does Reeves ignore the inner life of the White House, bringing into sharper focus JFK's physical disabilities, the preliminary plans for the 1964 campaign and the role Attorney General Robert Kennedy played as "a sort of surrogate President" at crucial moments. Precise and penetrating in its analysis, Reeves's microscopic examination of Kennedy during his presidency makes for compelling reading right down to such trivialities as his little economies (he was "cheap in the way rich people often are"), and even his throwaway lines as, after seeing one popularity poll, JFK quipped, "Jesus, it's like Ike. The worse you do, the better they like you." Photos. First serial to American Heritage; BOMC and History Book Club alternates; author tour. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Reeves, the veteran journalist who has written books on Presidents Ford and Reagan, here offers an excellent study of Kennedy as crisis manager. He presents Kennedy as neither an amoral playboy nor the ruler of Camelot but a poorly prepared president with mediocre congressional experience. Each chapter presents a different day in the administration--a unique format that effectively reveals how Kennedy responded to simultaneous harrowing issues. The Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crises, Vietnam, and the diplomacy of arms reduction illustrate how Kennedy was constrained by the unshakable Cold War fear of monolithic communism. This approachable investigation of Kennedy's use of power, read in tandem with Nigel Hamilton's JFK: Reckless Youth ( LJ 10/15/92), provides a thorough, even-handed review of the Kennedy years. Highly recommended for most public libraries and all subject collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/93. -- Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Behind the scenes in the Kennedy Administration--in well- documented, unusually revealing depth. Reeves (The Reagan Detour, 1985, etc.) draws on scores of recently released documents (including transcripts of Oval Office audiotapes) and interviews with surviving New Frontiersmen to create a day-to-day, sometimes even minute-by-minute, chronicle of JFK's decision-making. While finding the President to be ``intelligent, detached, [and] candid if not always honest,'' Reeves also shows him as disorganized, impatient, and addicted to the notion that it was ``brains,'' not ideology or idealism, that counted. Not only are certain neglected aspects of the Kennedy presidency explored in great depth here (e.g., how this bored, restless White House economics student came around to Keynesianism)--but so are topics delved into countless times before. The cumulative impression is of a natural politician who reacted to events rather than mastering them. JFK confronted Khrushchev without igniting a nuclear war, and he concluded the landmark limited test-ban treaty, but he stumbled at the Bay of Pigs, was tugged reluctantly from his view that civil rights involved political rather than moral issues, and became increasingly mired in Vietnam. Kennedy's philandering is acknowledged, but without hyperbolic attention, and his use of drugs to counteract Addison's disease is discussed in relation to the effect on his performance (notably at his disastrous Vienna summit with Khrushchev). Reeves's narrative could use more commentary on how Kennedy either enhanced or diminished his office, as well as a fuller explanation of how his forceful father affected his thinking. But the author excels at examining how the President dealt with the burdens of office--seething at generals' stupidity, picking the brains of all he met, chuckling at the ironies of the political game. Neither Camelot elegy nor scathing revisionism--but the kind of cool, dispassionate narrative that JFK himself might have appreciated. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen) (First serial to American Heritage) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

The man behind Camelot
Reeves has quite literally stripped away the varnish that has accumulated over the years on the 1000 Days of Jack Kennedy. He has assembled a journal of sorts, giving the reader a fast-moving account of one of America's most enigmatic presidents. It is an interesting mixture of policy decisions, candid observations and revealing episodes that give one of the most complete pictures of President Kennedy.

The narrative starts a few days before the administration took office with the cabinet decisions that were being made, then guides the reader through the tumultuous inauguration ceremonies both on stage and backstage. Reeves deals with the troubling first 100 days of the administration in a very candid way, showing the indecision of Kennedy when it came to Cuba and Berlin. Kennedy was being pulled in all directions, putting too much faith in the CIA and dismissing the criticisms of his newly assembled cabinet. Eventually, Kennedy found his feet and began to project the confidence that had won him the presidency.

Reeves provides so many telling anecdotes, especially concerning Kennedy's health, which was never very good. This was one of the first books to reveal Kennedy's drug dependency to stave off Addison's disease and his excrutiating back pains. There is also Hugh Sidey's memorable swimming pool interview.

The book feels as though it were written by an aide close to Kennedy during his administration. Reeves has assembled an impressive array of quotes and first person observations into a seamless narrative. He has demystified the myth of Camelot, without diminishing the stature of the man. Reeves evocatively illustrates how Kennedy was able to project power in spite of his numerous handicaps, both physical and political.

The best and most balanced one-volume JFK biography...
Along with Herbert Parmet's "Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy", Richard Reeve's "President Kennedy" are the best two books ever written about a legendary (and much-romanticized) American President. Unlike Thomas Reeve's hatchet-job "A Question of Character", which basically could be called a job in "character assassination"; or books such as Arthur Schlesinger's "A Thousand Days", which idolize Kennedy and ignore his flaws and failures as President, Richard Reeve's book maintains an admirably objective and balanced view of our 35th President. Reeve's Kennedy is neither a liberal saint nor a debauched devil, but is instead a complicated and often frustrating man who is woefully unprepared for the Oval Office when he moves in in January 1961, but does possess a great many gifts that save him when he gets into trouble. Reeve's Kennedy makes many mistakes early on in his Administration - the Bay of Pigs, his disastrous summit with the Soviet Union's Nikita Krushchev in Vienna, and his reckless womanizing in private, which as Reeves notes might well have become public knowledge if some enterprising reporter had ever followed JFK's movements very closely. Yet Kennedy does learn from at least some of his mistakes, and his handling of the Berlin Wall Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis was excellent. Whether Kennedy would ever have grown into a great President is a matter of debate among historians, and after reading this book I had my answer - JFK was a good President in many ways, but he probably would never have become a great one, due to his overly cautious nature on civil rights and the other great issues of the sixties. In short, this is a very well-written, impressively researched, and very fair-minded look at one of our most difficult Presidents to study and write about...this should be required reading for anyone who's interested in the 1960's, the Kennedys, or American politics.

Reeves neither fawns, nor muckrakes in this balanced account
Richard Reeves' book is a welcome addition to the "Camelot Years" genre. Written from the President's perspective, i.e. "a day in the life" type format, this excellent read neither fawns, nor muckrakes, but rather gives a balanced account of a Presidency that, until this point, has not been examined in an objective light. Reeves' first person perspective shows a president who had more profile than courage. Inspite of his many gifts, JFK was diffident, at best, as President. Reeves book reveals a JFK that was driven, almost maniacally, to get to the White House, but once he got there was pretty much out of his league. The portrait of a neophyte statesman is obvious when Kennedy makes his first trip to Europe, receives a lukewarm reception from DeGaulle, and is taken to the woodshed by Nikita Khrushev who, upon seeing the youthful president exclaimed "he's younger than my own son." Reeves account beautifully illustrates how the rich playboy-president miscalculates Khrushev; one gets the impression that Kennedy felt that his Soviet counterpart could be rolled like a Boston pol. Kennedy came away from his first overseas trip as president much chastened. Richard Reeves' book is excellent; well written, well researched, and balanced. I highly recommend it. (I've read it twice!!)