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The Kennedys

An American Drama

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About this listen

Who are the Kennedys? Are they the brilliant, heroic, extraordinary people their admirers believe them to be? Or are they arrogant, competitive, self-absorbed children of a willful and immensely rich patriarch, as their detractors claim? In fact, they are all of these things, and more.

Years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews with family members and associates and extensive research into archives and sources unused until now, this is the nationwide best—seller whose very publication caused an uproar in the press. The first and only book to fully penetrate the Kennedy inner sanctum and reveal the true, all too human saga behind America’s most famous family.

©1984 Peter Collier and David Horowitz (P)1990 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Americas Politicians Politics & Activism Presidents & Heads of State United States Vietnam War Franklin D Roosevelt Imperialism Socialism Latin American Russia

Critic reviews

"It's a saga for sure, but between these covers, the mythology of the name is blown away." ( Forbes)
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I have been reading Kennedy books for 40 years nearly. I appreciate this one for not being sycophantic towards them, it was a new, and refreshing angle. However, the reader was 2 dimensional and somewhat boring in his manner, and that let the whole thing down unfortunately.

Rather interesting but the reader let it down

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This book has a focus on the personal family history of the Kennedys. If you are looking for information on Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis, assassinations of JFK and RFK, Chappaquiddick, etc,, in fact any individual event in the Kennedy's history, this is not the book to listen to. Most of these events receive little more than a few sentences. If you want a basic overview of family life then this is ok.

The final three hours are quite boring as they focus on the more recent Kennedys in the 80s who are relatively uninteresting compared with their more well known predecessors and don't seem to have done very much except getting wasted on drugs.

The main criticism of the book is that it tends to show the Kennedys as being little more than gung-ho airheads. I have listened to other Kennedy books which gave a much more balanced and realistic biography. This isn't helped by the poor reading. Christopher Hurt probably got the job reading this one as he does a passable impersonation of JFK, but he rattles through at a fair pace, breezily describing great events of history and deep personal tragedy alike as though he's reading some light romantic fiction.

Comprehensive family history

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