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    An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963
    Unavailable
    An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963
    Unavailable
    An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963
    Audiobook (abridged)9 hours

    An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963

    Written by Robert Dallek

    Narrated by Richard McGonagle

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Everywhere acclaimed for its compelling narrative, its fresh insights, and its dispassionate appraisal of John F. Kennedy's presidency, this #1 national bestseller is the first full-scale single-volume biography of JFK to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. Drawing on previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives, An Unfinished Life is packed with revelations large and small - about JFK's health, his love affairs, RFK's appointment as Attorney General, what Joseph Kennedy did to help his son win the White House, and the path JFK would have taken in the Vietnam entanglement had he survived. Robert Dallek succeeds as no other biographer has done in striking a critical balance - never shying away from JFK's weaknesses, brilliantly exploring his strengths - as he offers up a vivid portrait of a bold, brave, complex, heroic, human Kennedy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateAug 1, 2005
    ISBN9781594832840
    Unavailable
    An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963
    Author

    Robert Dallek

    Robert Dallek is the author of An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 and Nixon and Kissinger, among other books. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and Vanity Fair. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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    Reviews for An Unfinished Life

    4/5

    199 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I absolutely love biography. I love American history. I love studying presidents. And I loved this book.Dallek did a nice job of balancing both President Kennedy's pre-presidential life (his time at Harvard, his WWII service, his time in the congress) with his time in office. The thing with JFK, and really the entire Kennedy family, is the personal stories are sometimes more interesting than the accounts of their public service. The accounts of Kennedy's womanizing are stuff of legend, and while the more salacious accounts make for fun reading, Dallek doesn't dive into those as much as he keeps to facts.The presidential years are fascinating. The Bay of Pigs incident, the dealings with Kruschev and the U.S.S.R., Castro/Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and Civil Rights are all covered as thorough as possible in a one volume biography. Certainly, there is much more to be said about all of these events and issues, but those have all received thorough treatment in other places. There is very little discussion of the assassination, so if that's what you're here for you'll need to look somewhere else.An Unfinished Life is a wonderful biography for those looking for a thorough and accessible presentation of John F. Kennedy's life. I would recommend it highly.
    • 4/5
      Loved it. Fascinating
    • 4/5
      I think that this book tells the life of John F. Kennedy very well. It is the shortend version of a literary masterpiece. The book that it was based off of won awards and was named the best book that has told the life of John Kennedy. Even thought it is a shortend version of the book it contains all of the same main points with losing some of the smaller details. This book has 96 pages and the original has more than 800 pages so they must have lost a lot of information in it. It tells about his family from his grandparents to his son Patrick in the year 2010. This book includes when he was just becoming governor. It also goes through his campaign to the white house and him being elected as the 35th president of the United States of America.One thing that I liked the most about this book was that it is the shortened version of the book. The original is more than 800 pages and this version is much less. Even though I enjoyed reading about this president I felt like that would be a lot of reading to do. I also thought that it must have been mainly a bunch of details about the same things that were written in the shortened version that I read. I am not a very literal person so I don't really like too much detail in a book when that is more than half of what has been written. I personaly enjoyed learning about the history of the country that I am home to. I feel like it is a shame that he died and that he didn't get to see how influential he was to the space program in the United States. I think that anyone that likes history of any kind would like this book and the way that it is so well written.
    • 4/5
      A very detailed and informative account of JFK's life. My only comment on this book is that the author kept mentioning all these medicines and diseases with little or no explanation at all on what they are. It is as if the author assumed that the reader already knows about those things. Nevertheless, i like the book and i recommend it to everyone.
    • 4/5
      This was a great book on a President that seemed destined for greatness or at least determined to get it by any means necessary. JFK was a man of many contradictions. A man that could inspire pride from the blue state to the red state. As I read this book the thing that really struck me was how amazing it was that he ever became President in the first place. Dalleck researched and puts Kennedy's health struggles and a few brushes with death in a whole new light. It's amazing with all his problems along with many infidelities that he ever was in a position to be elected President. This book is very educational and truly inspirational read for anyone with a love of history and politics.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful, neatly balanced biography of JFK that adds new information on his medical history/condition. Dallek does a first rate job as a biographer and historian but he also lets Kennedy's personality and those of his close associates and family members shine after almost half a century of accumulated jingoistic dust. While Dallek sometimes seems to fall under the "Kennedy spell" it is not often and never for long. He is objective, fair and critical by turns. And he can write. There is not a dusty, dry paragraph in the 711 pages. There are extensive notes at the end of the book and a small but complete bibliography for further reading. I was amazed that after so much, good and bad, worshipful and outrageous that has been published since the assination that I learned some new things. If you are going to read just one book on JFK this should be the one. I'm contemplating reading his two volume biography of Lyndon Johnson: Lone Star Rising and Flawed Giant. Dallek is that good.
    • 3/5
      Good book, fine reading, but miserable, uninformative table of contents never lets you know where you are in the real chapter structure.
    • 4/5
      This book remembers a great president. Tells the life of a great man. Gives an inside view to the big events that affected his life.
    • 3/5
      This is definitely a historical book. I thought Kennedy as an average president but this made me look at him in a different light especially for his work with civil rights, now I can rate him as above average. President Trump should take some pointers from this book as far as understanding our relationship with Russia. Now if you are looking for juicy gossip regarding Marilyn Monroe and secret affairs , this is not the book. Unfortunately , it barely talked about his relationship with his siblings, his marriage life with Jackie or his children.
    • 5/5
      Very good! Insightful and well researched. Particularly, in regard to his health, JFK would not have had made it for reelection.
    • 3/5
      An exhaustive...and sometimes exhausting...look at the political life of John F. Kennedy. If you are looking for a personal biography of the late president, this isn't it. This work recounts in minute detail almost every single political decision made by JFK. Missing from this are the personal details of his life. Granted the book made huge strides in telling of his medical conditions, there is almost a complete absence of family life within these pages. His marriage to Jackie, the births of their children, and the death of their son are barely talked about. One wonders why, as they were so important to Kennedy.Maybe this should have been titled "An Unfinished Book".

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      A good biography of Kennedy. Gave it three stars. It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst. I think I might just have read too many Kennedy books to give more stars unless the material is presented in more intriguing fashion.

      If John Kennedy is one of your favorite historical figures, you won't be disappointed.
    • 4/5
      A thorough account of JFK's background, life, and presidency. This book is suitable to history buffs and casual readers alike. I enjoyed it very much.
    • 3/5
      I've come to what may be the hardest Presidential biography to review. I was born in 1962, and so never really experienced Kennedy in real life. I've heard and read many things about him over the years and so I'm having a bit of a hard time not being very skeptical of what I read - what with all the mythology built up around him. Fortunately, Dallek's biography does a pretty good job of cutting through the noise to get to the real man, at least as much as one can.Frankly, the picture Dallek paints isn't so nice. JFK, and all the Kennedy kids, really, were rich, and had a very tenuous connection with normal people. He wasn't a very nice person in a lot of ways as he grew up and went out into the world. His family - from Joe Kennedy on down - was pretty screwed up. His treatment of women in general was awful. Yet JFK was incredibly charismatic even as a young man, and people genuinely liked him. And later in life as he went into politics through his presidency, he found his niche in foreign relations, and he turned out to be incredibly well placed to meet Cold War challenges.An Unfinished Life, though, is a flawed biography - not so much in content as in execution. The first half or so of the book up until Kennedy's campaign for the presidency is quite good. The second half, about 350 pages, deals with the last four years of his life in sometimes excruciating and repetitive detail. I wish Dallek had had a heavier hand in the editing of the book. Still, it's a pretty good discussion of a very interesting life.

      1 person found this helpful