Kirkus Reviews QR Code
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY: HISTORY MAKER by Marc Schulman

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY: HISTORY MAKER

by Marc Schulman

Pub Date: Dec. 20th, 2010
Publisher: Multieducator, Inc.

An overstuffed survey of the life of John Kennedy (1917–63), blending words, images and sounds into a serviceable though sometimes haphazard multimedia package.

History Maker covers every aspect of the late president’s life, with some unexpected surprises—a photograph of 1925, for instance, showing young Jack in a uniform befitting a Keystone Kop, nightstick and all, and one of the president and first lady greeting the empress of Iran, Jacqueline’s simple tiara outshining the opulence of Persia thanks to a trick of the light. The text is light and often glancing: The overview text mentions the president’s service in World War II and asserts, “Lieutenant Kennedy was a certified hero,” without giving sufficient reason for that judgment. This is remedied in the secondary text, but hypertext links to that more circumstantial explanation would have come in handy. The abundant typos in the navigation menus alone (“The Thougts of Author,” “Helen Keller Visits the Presdient,” “Kennedy Kruschev Summit” “Address at Washinton University”) give the app a hurried, slipshod feel; so, too, do gaffes such as a repeated photograph of the crew of PT-109. Even so, there are many good and useful things here, including an excellent portfolio of photographs and a thorough timeline that add value to material that is readily available elsewhere.