Reviews of JFK: Reckless Youth

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WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Reading a good book by a roaring fire while a blizzard pelts snow against the nearby picture window is my idea of cozy.

We arrived at this Canadian mountain resort on Dec. 23 to ski our way through the holidays with my wife's family. But I took the occasional day off when temperatures fell to 10 below zero or driving wind and snow turned a leas- ant sport into a test of survival.

That created enough time to read the newly published book, "JFK Reckless Youth" by Nigel Hamilton, a British scholar who set out for the first time to reveal "the whole man." This 898-page tome certainly succeeds in creating a credible and intimate picture of a very remarkable young John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who, for one born to super wealth, had to overcome an incredible amount of adversity in his first 29 years.
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Biographer attacks Kennedy clan
The Times January 23, 1993, Saturday
Overseas news
From Ben Macintyre in Washington

IN THE week that Bill Clinton sought to take over the mantle of President Kennedy, the debate over the historical legacy of the Kennedy clan is raging with an undimmed ferocity.

Writing in yesterday's New York Times, the British historian Nigel Hamilton, whose highly critical biography detailing the family life of the young JFK caused near apoplexy among Kennedy acolytes, accused the Kennedys of withholding information about the assassinated president, obstructing researchers and trying to enforce a sanitised version of his life.

''Their lack of co-operation not only led me to believe they dislike history,'' Hamilton wrote of the surviving children of Rose and Joe Kennedy, ''but are all determined to defy its demands to the final bell, as they have for 30 years.''

The first volume of Hamilton's 926-page biography covering John Kennedy's life until the age of 29, entitled JFK, Reckless Youth, was published in America last year and painted an uncompromising picture, in the author's words, of ''the emotional neglect by his mother when he was small, the despotism of his manically ambitious father and the effect of such a dysfunctional marriage on JFK's character''.
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Kennedys call book's charges 'grotesque'
The Boston Globe December 3, 1992, Thursday, City Edition
NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. 15
By Jordana Hart, Globe Staff

In a scathing rebuke of the new biography of the young John F. Kennedy as well as reviews of the book, Sen. Edward Kennedy and three of his sisters strongly rejected the book's allegations that the Kennedys were a dysfunctional, abusive family, calling the information "grotesque" and "outrageous falsehoods."

In an article published on the op-ed page of The New York Times today, Kennedy, along with sisters Jean Kennedy Smith, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Patricia Kennedy Lawford, tore into the unauthorized 898-page biography, "JFK: The Reckless Years," by British historian Nigel Hamilton.

"It is grotesque to compare our father to Stalin. It is preposterous to call any of us 'abused' children," they wrote. "Our parents gave us love, support and encouragement throughout their lives. We categorically reject the misjudgments, mischaracterizations, insinuations and outright falsehoods."

What emerges in Hamilton's work, is a portrait of a family so disjointed as to shatter any image of the legendary family as the standard bearer of basic family values.

Hamilton builds a portrait of a repressed mother who "managed" but did not love her children and a promiscuous, greedy and politically ambitious father.

While recognizing the legitimacy of debate over the family's activities and accomplishments, the Kennedys slammed the book for its negative focus on Rose and Joseph Sr. "Any so-called biography that tries to take our parents from us is not worth the paper it is written on," they wrote.

Ted's memo: Glad we tucked it to the Brit who smeared Dad
The Boston Globe December 9, 1992, Wednesday, City Edition OP-ED; Pg. 21
By Alex Beam, Globe Staff

TO: Eunice Shriver, Pat Lawford, Jean Smith
FROM: Ted K.
RE: Operation PATERNOSTER

Girls, it's unanimous! Everyone agrees that our New York Times op-ed piece defending Dad against that scurrilous Brit muckraker was a resounding success! It will be a long time before some "biographer" like Nigel Hamilton messes with the Kennedy legacy again. I hear Random House has sent out 50,000 copies of our article to bookstores, telling the public what a piece of garbage "JFK; Reckless Youth" really is.
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