For FDR, it was polio. For Martin Luther King Jr., a spiritual breakdown from threats to his life and family. JFK's was the heroic rescue of fellow sailors from the sinking navy vessel PT 109
, and for Robert Kennedy it was the experience of his brother's assassination. According to Chafe, a professor of history at Duke University, these "moments of crisis" shaped the political framework of the 20th century's most notable leaders. Identifying such pivotal moments, and their resultant "patterns of behavior," appears to be the primary purpose of Chafe's eight biographical essays. For though he introduces this book with a lofty preamble on the relationship between the private and the political, his presentation is more gossipy than scholarly. He uses no formal notation from primary resources, and his psychological analyses, while likely grounded in some established fact, tend to make wild generalizations. Yet his collection succeeds as an engaging series of political portraits that condense a tremendous amount of historical material into short, opinionated essays. His depictions of Joe Kennedy's influence on his sons, LBJ's manipulations of power and Nixon's paranoia offer insight into their agendas and decision making, but it is the final essay on the Clintons that best exemplifies the blurry distinction between private and public. (Nov.)
