Publicity for this bio says that Schwarz (The Peter Lawford Story; Rose Kennedy and Her Family) "reveals for the first time the true story of this larger-than-life patriarch." One wonders how this can be the case, as Schwarz appears to base his book heavily on very loosely referenced secondary sources (he mentions interviews with "invisible" Kennedy staff members, but this is vague). The star witness Schwarz breathlessly announces in his intro—Barbara Gibson, onetime personal secretary to Rose Kennedy—is hardly referenced at all, but then neither is anyone else. Schwarz's 22 chapters have a total of only 92 endnotes. Even more problematic is the fact that Schwarz repeats a number of myths about Kennedy—the majority of them long ago debunked by other researchers and writers. Example: As more than one recent scholar has deduced, Joseph Kennedy did not buy 40,000 copies of John Kennedy's Why England Slept
in order to make the book a bestseller. Other small errors compound to make Schwarz's tome annoying for any reader familiar with the Kennedy saga—and there are many. For instance: Joe did not cooperate, as Schwarz implies he did, in arranging for Jack to get posted to the South Pacific theater during WWII. Quite the contrary. Jack (as has been documented in several recent books) had to go around his father's back and over his head to get the assignment he craved. In sum, readers interested in JPK would do better to consult Ronald Kessler's The Sins of the Father, granddaughter Amanda Smith's Hostage to Fortune
or Michael Beschloss's excellent Kennedy and Roosevelt. Photos. (Sept. 12)
