The Kennedy Obsession is an apt title for a book. Sixty years after newspapers praised Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy’s brood as “America’s best known large family” and almost forty years after Joe’s second son became president of the United States, Americans remain fixated on their “royal family.” As 1998 began, the President’s widow was the subject of a Broadway farce, “Jackie”; the President’s son was editing a magazine called George which should have been called “John-John”; the latest fallen Kennedy, Bobby’s son Michael, was eulogized on the cover of Newsweek; and yet another scandalography chronicling “The Dark Side of Camelot” was a bestseller. Amid the many questions swirling about the Kennedy family and the Kennedy presidency, two in particular stand out: why are Americans so obsessed with this particular family and what, if anything, did John F. Kennedy accomplish during his “Thousand Days”? Fortunately, two new books help answer these questions. The Kennedy Obsession is a slim yet illuminating volume that assesses “the popular hero ‘John F. Kennedy,'” a legendary figure in whom “Americans saw the ideals of American mythology incarnated.” The Kennedy Tapes is a massive yet gripping volume that belies the caricature of John Kennedy as a testosterone-crazed warmonger.
