cover image Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography

Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography

Adam Clymer. William Morrow & Company, $27.5 (692pp) ISBN 978-0-688-14285-8

Few people are given the chance to live a productive life after they have become legends in their own time. Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy is one of them, and Clymer, Washington editor of the New York Times, does an excellent job of narrating how Kennedy navigated a burdensome family legacy to become, in Clymer's view, one of the most effective lawmakers in American history. By the end of the book, most readers will believe that Clymer has made his case. But this is no hagiography. Clymer started covering Congress as a newspaper reporter in 1963, the year after Kennedy's election to the Senate, when John Kennedy was president and Robert Kennedy was attorney general. He has observed Senator Kennedy at more or less close range for 36 years, a level of intimacy that mitigates against rose-tinted glasses. Indeed, Clymer explores Kennedy's legislative, political and personal failures as well as the successes. No serious discussion of Kennedy as a legislator, party politician, husband, father or friend can proceed very far without a re-evaluation of Chappaquiddick. Clymer's assessment takes only a few pages, but it is solid and insightful, putting the episode in proper perspective and allowing it to resonate subtly through the rest of the book without treating it as the defining moment of Kennedy's life. Clymer's deft explanations of complex congressional maneuverings are models of good political reportage, and his judgments of Kennedy's character are even-handed. This is an old-fashioned, balanced, well-organized biography that does justice to both the virtues and flaws, public and private, of Senator Kennedy. (Nov.)