After an initial honeymoon with historians, in recent years John F. Kennedy has been more carefully scrutinized. Michael O'Brien, who knows as much about Kennedy as any historian now writing, here takes a comprehensive look at the feature of Camelot that remained largely under the radar during the White House years: Kennedy's womanizing. Indeed, O'Brien writes, Kennedy's approach to women and sex was near pathological, beyond the farthest reaches of the media's imagination at the time. The record makes for an astonishing piece of presidential history.
This monumental work of investigative journalism reveals the Kennedy White House as never before. With its meticulously documented & compulsively readable portrait of John F. Kennedy as a man whose reckless personal behavior imperiled his presidency, The Dark Side of Camelot sparked a firestorm of controversy upon its initial publication - becoming a runaway bestseller & one of the year's most talked-about books. Now in paperback, this watershed work will continue to provoke public discussion as the debate intensifies over what constitutes proper personal & political behavior on the part of our nation's leaders.
John F. Kennedy creates an absorbing, insightful and distinguished biography of one of America's most legendary Presidents. While current fashion in Kennedy scholarship is to deride the man's achievements, this book describes Kennedy's strengths, explains his shortcomings, and offers many new revelations. There are many specialized books on Kennedy's career, but no first-class modern biography--one that takes advantage of the huge volume of recent books and articles and new material released by the JFK library. Ten years in the making, this is a balanced and judicious profile that goes beyond the clash of interpretations and offers a fresh, nuanced perspective.
"A FRESH AND UNVARNISHED PORTRAIT OF A FASCINATING, TALENTED, AND DEEPLY FLAWED FAMILY." —Boston Herald Laurence Leamer was granted unheralded access to private Kennedy papers, and he interviewed family and old friends, many of whom had never been interviewed before, for this incredible portrait of the women in America’s "royal family." From Bridget Murphy, the foremother who touched shore at East Boston in 1849, to the intelligent, independent Kennedy women of today, Laurence Leamer tells their unforgettable stories. Here are the private thoughts of Kathleen, the flirtatious debutante in prewar England . . . the truth behind Joe Kennedy’s insistence that his mildly retarded daughter, Rosemary, be lobotomized . . . the real story behind Joan and Ted’s whirlwind romance . . . Jackie’s desire for a divorce from JFK in the 1950s . . . Pat Lawford’s disastrous Hollywood marriage . . . how Caroline discovered her cousin David’s death by overdose, and more. Tough enough to withstand the unimaginable, these Kennedy women soldier on in the name of their extraordinary family and what they believe is right. "MASTERFUL . . . AN ENDLESSLY FASCINATING READ . . . A wealth of beautifully rendered social detail, at times reading like a realist novel by Edith Wharton . . . [A] page-turner from start to finish." —The Dallas Morning News
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “With the benefit of hindsight and good old-fashioned maturity, [Mimi Alford] writes not just about the secret, but the corrosive effect of keeping that secret. . . . You can’t help liking her, or her elegant and thoroughly good-natured book.”—The Spectator In the summer of 1962, nineteen-year-old Mimi Beardsley arrived in Washington, D.C., to begin an internship in the White House press office. After just three days on the job, the privileged but sheltered young woman was presented to the President himself. Almost immediately, the two began an affair that would continue for the next eighteen months. Emotionally unprepared to counter the President’s charisma and power, Mimi was also ill-equipped to handle the feelings of isolation that would follow as she fell into the double life of a college student who was also the secret lover of the most powerful man in the world. After the President’s assassination in Dallas, she grieved alone, locked her secret away, and tried to start a new life, only to be blindsided by her past. Now, no longer defined by silence or shame, Mimi Alford finally unburdens herself with this unflinchingly honest account of her life and her extremely private moments with a very public man. This paperback edition includes a special Q&A, in which the author reflects on the intense media attention surrounding the book’s initial release. Once Upon a Secret is a moving story of a woman emerging from the shadows to reclaim the truth. “What [Alford] sacrificed in lucre she has more than recovered in credibility and dignity.”—The Washington Times “Compelling . . . a polished voice telling a credible story you can take to the bank.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Explosive . . . searingly candid.”—New York Post
Anyone who has struggled with sex addiction knows that living with constant sexual compulsions can be extremely difficult. But summoning the courage to find help for this condition can be even more of a challenge. If addictions to pornography, strip clubs, massage parlors, prostitutes, phone sex, or chat rooms have made you feel trapped, this book can help you find a way to break free. Written by a former sex addict who specializes in counseling people who suffer from sexually compulsive behavior, Breaking the Cycle presents a step-by-step plan to enjoying a life of productivity and purpose. You can free yourself from the powerful, compulsive urges that may have damaged your career, finances, or relationships with friends and family. The exercises in this book will show you how to regain control of your life and build meaningful intimate connections with others.
Perhaps no one's death has stirred more interest, controversy, and theories than Marilyn Monroe's August 4 of 1962. In Murder Orthodoxies, author Donald R. McGovern analyzes and examines the many theories that Monroe was murdered by a host of curious characters-from the middle Kennedy brothers to brutal gangsters to aliens. McGovern separates fact from fiction and theory from outlandish rumor. He addresses and debunks the usual allegations related to Monroe's death, the secrets recorded in her little red diary, her scheduled whistle-blowing press conference, the murder plots by organized crime and the brothers Kennedy, and the fatal injection of drugs, along with many others. In Murder Orthodoxies, McGovern restores logic and sanity to the investigation of Monroe's death. His thesis is based upon the premise that the engines of conspiracies are started and fueled by opinion, not by facts. His credible conclusions are based on logic, science, toxicology, and forensic evidence.
THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, NOW IN PAPERBACK, with a reading group guide and a new afterword by the author. At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up. Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.
There’s the office: President of the United States. And then there’s the man in the office—prone to temptation and looking to unwind after a long day running the country. Celebrating the decidedly less distinguished side of the nation’s leaders, humor writer Brian Abrams offers a compelling, hilarious, and true American history on the rocks—a Washington-to-Obama, vice-by-vice chronicle of how the presidents like to party. From explicit love letters to slurred speeches to nude swims at Bing Crosby’s house, reputations are ruined and secrets bared. George Washington brokered the end of the? American Revolution over glasses of Madeira. Ulysses S. Grant rarely drew a sober breath when he was leading the North to victory. And it wasn’t all liquor. Some presidents preferred their drugs—Nixon was a pill-popper. And others chased women instead—both ?the professorial Woodrow Wilson (who signed his love letters “Tiger”) and the good ol’ boy Bill Clinton, though neither could hold a candle to Kennedy, who also received the infamous Dr. Feelgood’s “vitamin” injections of pure amphetamine. Illustrated throughout with infographics (James Garfield’s attempts at circumnavigating the temperance movement), comic strips (George Bush Sr.’s infamous televised vomiting incident), caricatures, and fake archival documents, the book has the smart, funny feel of Mad magazine meets The Colbert Report. Plus, it includes recipes for 44 cocktails inspired by each chapter’s partier-in-chief.
A Kirkus Best Book of 2013 A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s last hundred days that asks what might have been Fifty years after his death, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke argues that the heart of that legend is what might have been. As we approach the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, JFK’s Last Hundred Days reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of great change, finally on the cusp of making good on his extraordinary promise. Kennedy’s last hundred days began just after the death of two-day-old Patrick Kennedy, and during this time, the president made strides in the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, and his personal life. While Jackie was recuperating, the premature infant and his father were flown to Boston for Patrick’s treatment. Kennedy was holding his son’s hand when Patrick died on August 9, 1963. The loss of his son convinced Kennedy to work harder as a husband and father, and there is ample evidence that he suspended his notorious philandering during these last months of his life. Also in these months Kennedy finally came to view civil rights as a moral as well as a political issue, and after the March on Washington, he appreciated the power of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for the first time. Though he is often depicted as a devout cold warrior, Kennedy pushed through his proudest legislative achievement in this period, the Limited Test Ban Treaty. This success, combined with his warming relations with Nikita Khrushchev in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, led to a détente that British foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas- Home hailed as the “beginning of the end of the Cold War.” Throughout his presidency, Kennedy challenged demands from his advisers and the Pentagon to escalate America’s involvement in Vietnam. Kennedy began a reappraisal in the last hundred days that would have led to the withdrawal of all sixteen thousand U.S. military advisers by 1965. JFK’s Last Hundred Days is a gripping account that weaves together Kennedy’s public and private lives, explains why the grief following his assassination has endured so long, and solves the most tantalizing Kennedy mystery of all—not who killed him but who he was when he was killed, and where he would have led us.
