John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961-1963
Outstanding for clarity even by the standards of the excellent American Presidents series, Brinkley’s overview of the thirty-fifth chief executive vaults to the head of the pack of basic biographies of its subject because of its thoroughness and evenhandedness. It notes all the most meaningful events and persons in Kennedy’s life and all his most salient characteristics, including his lifelong ill health and obsessive womanizing, both of which Robert Dallek soft-pedals in his John F. Kennedy (2011). Moreover, it states conflicting opinions of Kennedy and his actions throughout, though especially in the piquantly titled last chapter, “The Afterlife of John F. Kennedy.” Brinkley’s own evaluation, implicit rather than open, is admirably middle of the road. JFK was not the liberal hero ardent admirers made of him after his death, nor was he the incompetent detractors make him out to have been. Painfully slow to embrace black civil rights and guilty of embroiling the U.S. in Vietnam, he successfully resolved the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and initiated real action on nuclear-arms limitation—no mean feats. --Ray Olson