A well-made enhanced e-book that collects some 30 speeches by John F. Kennedy from January 1960 until the day before his assassination in November 1963.
Presidential biographers Dallek and Golway are an ideal team for the task of providing background for the audio pieces that are the heart of this book. On that final appearance, consisting of remarks given at an aerospace medical facility in San Antonio, for instance, they observe rather mildly that Texas was “a source of some concern among Democrats as 1964 approached,” that being an election year that Kennedy was just gearing up for. (Kids, presidential campaigns didn’t last two years then, as they do now.) Against the audio backdrop, Dallek and Golway do a good job of supplying context to explain references that may not be readily understood today: Diem, the Bay of Pigs, U-2 (not the band), Sputnik. Even so, the text seems best suited to a readership with some grounding in political history—advanced high-school students, for instance, or general readers to whom such terms aren’t entirely foreign.
Readable and easily navigated and bookmarked—a first-rate introduction to the Kennedy presidency.
