THE EDUCATION OF EDWARD KENNEDY: A Family Biography

by Burton Hersh ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 1972

An extravagant job of puffery, this macro-biography identifies warts and bumps and frosts them with family history, and glacees them with pop psychology so that flaws become delectable, deficiencies piquant. Teddy himself appears as centerpiece only in flashes, a prismatic ice sculpture of variable dimensions. After slurping through the Fitzgerald-Kennedy rise to respectable power and a series of rehashes of the elder brothers' careers, young Teddy emerges (Milton not Choate, no valet at Harvard, a G.I. not an officer). His precocious political savvy is underlined in an expert elaboration of the usual stuff about his campaign efforts and superior senate clubbability, and there's absorbing description -- but insufficient analysis -- of his rise and fall as Democratic Whip. Hersh is a master of the strategic concession: his account of the Harvard cheating episode is surpassed only by the carefully orchestrated buildup to the Chappaquiddick disaster, which leaves an impression of guiltlessness of venery rather than guilt of bad judgment; and there are cleverly preemptive references to Teddy's drinking bouts and Joan's too and their evolving estrangement. If this were a ready-for-'72 campaign contribution, these might have been deleted, along with Hersh's egregious contempt for the electorate as a mass of ""ox-tongued"" beer-drinking slobs with a fringe of ""scrub-women"" and ""chocolate-colored"" individuals. The book's style is an amalgam of high Manchesterese, low Mailerese, and Garry Willsian political sociology -- ""intellectually a bit high-assed,"" as Hersh says of the Kennedy boiler-room girls. The book is rich -- in gossip and other potential -- and there has been national press coverage anticipating a still wider popular demand.

Pub Date: April 24, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION