Kirkus Reviews QR Code
ROBERT KENNEDY IN NEW YORK by Gerald Gardner

ROBERT KENNEDY IN NEW YORK

By

Pub Date: Oct. 19th, 1965
Publisher: Random House

The author of this broadly scored account of the ex-Attorney General's successful campaign for the Senate seat from New York, if asked for a definition of partisan politics , might explain that it was that state in which you admire a candidate as much as you did your mother (and express about as much criticism of his person or methods as you did of her). Thus Mr. Gardner's method, like any product of excessive loyalty, tells more about the author than the subject. With the exception of some personalia, such as what it is like to eat with Mrs. John F. Kennedy , Dick Whittington could have done no better at describing what it is like to be in the presence of royalty. There is nothing here that did not appear in the New York Times and some of it is on a banal, conversational level. ""Can you come out to Glen Cove for lunch tomorrow?"" ""I said I could."" This goes on for 202 pages. The book is prefaced with an epigram from T. S. Eliot about the Saviour which Mr. Gardner has mistaken to be about a hero. Or was he merely following his heart? In any case, very little is discovered about the man who represents New York in Washington.