JFK

This biography by J. Randy Taraborrelli examines John Fitzgerald Kennedy's life through his personal relationships rather than offering a conventional presidential history. Drawing on decades of research, new interviews, and unpublished manuscripts, Taraborrelli frames JFK as a man whose character was still evolving at the time of his assassination. The subtitle, "Public, Private, Secret," was inspired by Jackie Kennedy's remark that she had "three lives: public, private, and secret."

The book opens in July 1952 at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, where thirty-five-year-old Jack Kennedy, hobbled by chronic back pain, has invited his new girlfriend, twenty-two-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier, to meet his family. The scene establishes key dynamics: Rose Kennedy's retreat to a shed on the beach for solitary prayer, her tense marriage to the patriarch Joe, and Jack's emotional remoteness from the woman he is courting primarily as a political asset.

Taraborrelli traces the roots of Jack's character to his parents. Rose, raised with Victorian restraint, was emotionally unavailable despite meticulous attention to practical details. Jack took her indifference harder than his siblings; she never visited him during a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever at age two. Her frequent European trips and rigid Catholicism further alienated him, and the author argues she became the template for how Jack viewed marriage: Wives were meant to sacrifice and endure.

Joe Kennedy, despite his moral failings, was a deeply engaged father who made his children believe greatness was attainable. His political career ended when his isolationist stance as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom was perceived as appeasement of Hitler, and he channeled his ambitions into his sons' futures.

Jack, born on May 29, 1917, was chronically ill from childhood, and reading became his escape. A 1939 European trip transformed him into a serious observer of world affairs, and his Harvard senior thesis became Why England Slept, analyzing Britain's failure to prepare for war.

Taraborrelli presents Jack's 1941 romance with Danish journalist Inga Arvad as the only time he truly fell in love. Inga was accused of being a Nazi spy after photographs surfaced of her with Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, prompting an FBI investigation. Joe intervened, engineering Jack's naval transfer to separate them. Jack ended the relationship in February 1942 but blamed his father for ruining his only chance at happiness.

The book presents Jack's heroism aboard PT-109, his patrol torpedo boat, in August 1943 as a transformative moment. When a Japanese destroyer rammed the vessel, Jack towed a badly burned crew member to safety by clenching a strap between his teeth and swimming for hours. The death of his older brother Joe Jr. in a 1944 bombing mission redirected the family's presidential ambitions onto Jack.

Jack's courtship of Jackie was slow and reluctant. Their September 1953 wedding was orchestrated by Joe and Jackie's mother, Janet Auchincloss, both of whom viewed the match as a strategic alliance. The marriage quickly soured. A risky 1954 spinal surgery nearly killed Jack, with Jackie serving as his caregiver, and during recovery he conceived Profiles in Courage, though aide Ted Sorensen wrote most of the text.

In 1955, while Jackie recovered from a miscarriage, Jack spent a week in Sweden with Gunilla von Post, a young Swedish woman he had first encountered on vacation in Cannes just before his wedding. In August 1956, while Jack was cruising the Mediterranean, Jackie suffered the stillbirth of a daughter she named Arabella. Jack did not return for five days, devastating Jackie and enraging both families. He then began an affair with Joan Lundberg, a cocktail waitress he met in Santa Monica.

Jackie established terms for tolerating infidelity: "Show me some respect and don't you dare rub it in my face." This mirrored an arrangement Rose had made with Joe, who maintained a relationship with his secretary Janet DesRosiers with Rose's explicit consent. Meanwhile, Jackie uncovered the family's deepest secret: Jack's sister Rosemary, who had an intellectual disability, had been secretly lobotomized by Joe in 1941 without Rose's knowledge, leaving her profoundly impaired and hidden away for decades. Jackie insisted Jack visit Rosemary, and the experience deepened his empathy and motivated disability legislation.

Jack's path to the presidency ran through hard-fought primaries. His decisive victory in heavily Protestant West Virginia, where he declared that nobody asked his religion when he joined the navy, neutralized the Catholic question. The first televised presidential debate against Richard Nixon on September 26, 1960, established television as a dominant force in American politics. Jack won the presidency on November 8 with just 118,574 votes out of 69 million cast. His iconic inaugural address called on Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Crisis defined the White House years. The April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion ended in disaster when Jack refused to send American troops to support CIA-trained Cuban exiles landing in Cuba. The debacle cemented his brother Bobby Kennedy, whom he had appointed attorney general, as his indispensable partner. In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted when Soviet offensive missiles were discovered in Cuba. Jack imposed a naval quarantine rather than the air strike his Joint Chiefs demanded. Bobby devised the key solution: responding only to the more conciliatory of two conflicting letters from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev while secretly agreeing to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

On civil rights, Jack evolved from cautious pragmatist to moral advocate. His June 1963 televised address framed racial equality as a moral imperative, and after civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington, Jack welcomed activists to the White House, deeply moved by King's words.

Joe Kennedy's devastating stroke in December 1961 left the patriarch unable to speak and confined to a wheelchair. Jack confided to Jackie that he wished God had taken his father's life rather than "his soul," and Jackie whispered, "Just like Rosemary," drawing a parallel to what Joe had done to his daughter.

The August 1963 death of their infant son Patrick from respiratory distress syndrome catalyzed the deepest transformation of Jack's life. He wept openly and confessed to his sister-in-law Joan Kennedy that he had not been "the best husband." Patrick's death brought Jack and Jackie closer than ever. At their tenth anniversary, Jack dropped to one knee and proposed to Jackie formally for the first time, and they began planning a vow renewal ceremony. He ended all extramarital contact, telling his friend and fellow senator George Smathers that he had experienced "a crisis of conscience."

Meanwhile, the Vietnam crisis spiraled. While grieving Patrick, Jack was maneuvered by subordinates into authorizing a cable that sanctioned a coup against South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. When Diem and his brother were murdered on November 1, Jack was sickened.

On the morning of November 22, 1963, in Fort Worth, Jackie awoke at three in the morning with an anxiety attack and went to Jack's room, where they made love for the last time. Hours later, in the motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, shots rang out. Jack was forty-six years old.

At the state funeral on November 25, the two families gathered one final time. Janet Auchincloss took Rose's hand and said, "Your Jack, he gave us all such a beautiful, perfect life." Rose answered quietly, "It really was beautiful." Jackie watched as a single tear fell down Rose's cheek and traced it gently with her fingertip.