The Kennedy Brothers

Eight years apart in age, John F. and Robert F. Kennedy were wildly different in temperament and sensibility. Jack was the leader—charismatic, ironic, capable of extraordinary growth and reach, yet also reckless. Bobby was the fearless, hardworking Boy Scout—unafraid of dirty work and ruthless about protecting his brother and destroying their enemies. Jack, it was said, was the first Irish Brahman, Bobby the last Irish Puritan.

As Richard D. Mahoney demonstrates with brilliant clarity in this impeccably documented, magisterial book, the Kennedys lived their days of power in dangerous, trackless territory. Mahoney gives us the Kennedy days and years as we have never before seen them. Here are Jack and Bobby in all their hubris and humanity, youthfulness and fatalism. Here, also, is American history as it unfolds. With a new foreword by David Talbot, The Kennedy Brothers is a masterful account of two men whose legacy continues to hold the American imagination.

Richard D. Mahoney, a Kennedy scholar emeritus of the University of Massachusetts, is an expert on international economics and foreign policy and the author of two histories of the Kennedy administration. He was the Democratic secretary of state and acting governor of Arizona. He is currently the director of the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University.

David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. He is the founder and former editor in chief of Salon.

“A haunting evocation of the fire-and-ice political partnership between Robert and John F. Kennedy.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Mahoney offers a vivid fraternal portrait of Jack and Bobby Kennedy as coparticipants in the crises of their times, setting in motion forces that would lead to their destruction.” —Publishers Weekly

“Like no other book written about the Kennedys.” —Arizona Republic

“Mahoney has presented us with a portrait of Jack and Bobby Kennedy that is much more complex and far more human.” —Oregonian

"Elegantly written." —Gannett News Service