J.F.K.: The Man & the Myth

by Victor Lasky

Book Overview

We have always had a right to know the full story. Thanks to this book we have it. The only truly candid book on John F. Kennedy - His Family, his advisors, his record and his tactics! Painstakingly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440144078
• ISBN13: 9780440144076
• Release Date: September 1977
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
• Length: 883 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good Reporting

Victor Lasky made it simple. He took up for many of Kennedy's faults - faults that are evident in all of us - and exposed many of the political undermoorings that made JFK who he was. JFK is portrayed as having a lot more in common with Bill Clinton than Jesus Christ (the figure whom Kennedy mythmakers make JFK sound like). He exposes the brokering over the 1956 and 1960 VP selections - and given the results since then for the Democrats - seven defeats in eleven elections and both candidates who won from the South - it reads like a prophecy of what would happen to the Democratic Party. Yet you won't really hate JFK. You'll simply see him as a politician who would do anything to move up. How's that any different from anyone else?

Still a great read many times over after 41 years!

Makes me hate JFK all over again every time!

Feet of Clay

Lasky's book was a best-seller, at least by his standards. But he quickly pulled this book out of print in honor of JFK's sudden death in Dallas. Three years later, he was prompted by some friends to reprint it and added a bitter conclusion to all of the Kennedy years. As hard-hitting as this book is, he is rather gentlemanly about it and leaves most of the criticisms on the practical and intellectual level. In fact the one he really berates in this book is Arthur Schlesinger in some very funny asides. Back to the point, Lasky ultimately concludes that JFK was an indecisive and feckless President who meant well but didn't do well. And, in spite of what others might say about him, he never amounted to much; only becoming a hero because of his death. Lasky was the last of an old breed. He simply reports to you what JFK really said and did and leaves out his opinion until the end, in a brutal summation. Factual, but witty and lively, the book is a quick and damning summation that brushes away entirely the Kennedy myth and portrays all of the players, JFK, RFK, and Joseph P. Kennedy in realistic lights. He could have gone much harsher with the book but he didn't, in fact, it was his other books RFK, The Man and the Myth, and It Didn't Start with Watergate, that reveal more brutal information on his tumultuous tenure in office.