Nigel Hamilton "JFK: Reckless Youth."
Riveting, impressively researched, at times shocking, this first in a multi-volume life of John F. Kennedy lays bare the bruised, narcissistic psyche behind his charismatic facade. In this volume we meet a fun-loving but emotionally confused youth, deeply affected by the loveless union between his bullying, demanding father, Joseph, and his sanctimonious, prudish mother, Rose―a woman John F. Kennedy increasingly regarded with contempt.
We see him become a 19-year-old aide to his father, who was U.S. ambassador to Britain from 1938 to 1940, and an arch appeaser of Hitler; we read how the son steps out from his father's shadow, and reverses his own isolationist stance.
We see him mature as commander of an ill-fated PT boat in the Pacific and learn of his love affair with Danish reporter Inga Arvad, an associate of Hitler and Goebbels, whom the FBI suspected of being a Nazi spy. We leave him at the end of this volume as congressman-elect in 1946, in the process of transforming himself into an unsavory politician for whom the chase was the challenge―with voters as with women.
Hamilton has written a remarkably fresh work that promises to be the fullest, most revealing portrait of John F. Kennedy's personal and political development.
Photos.
Random House; First Edition. 1992.
Hardcover with DJ.
New book. Very minor shelf wear from rubbing. Book in very good visual, and excellent technical condition.