A lively biography of an iconic family before it became famous.
The Kennedys before Joseph and Rose.
Journalist Thompson, grandson of Irish immigrants, digs into the history of the family, beginning with the two who left Ireland to seek a new life in America: Bridget Murphy and Patrick Kennedy. In the 1840s, adventurous Bridget was driven by “a craving to leave the safety of habit and family and fling herself among strangers toward a strange new land.” Undaunted by a tough job market and the hostility of native Bostonians, Bridget found work as a domestic, to which she returned between pregnancies after she married the handsome Patrick. The couple managed on Patrick’s earnings as a barrel maker, but when he died of consumption in 1858, Bridget, in her mid-20s, struggled to support her four young children. A maid’s earnings would hardly suffice, so she became a hairdresser at an upscale department store, saved enough to become a grocer, and, by 1865, was a landlady for her own property. Patrick J. (1858-1929), her youngest child and only son, inherited her drive and resourcefulness. Restless as a laborer, he saw the business potential of liquor. By the time he was 23, he had a liquor license with a saloon that attracted local pols. Soon, he was tapped to run for election to Boston’s Democratic Ward and City Committee and, at 27, won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he served five terms before moving to the state Senate. Among his business ventures was the establishment of the Columbia Trust Company, a bank that later launched the career of his son Joseph Patrick Kennedy. Thompson offers a cursory overview of Joe, Rose, and their children, devoting his attention to their forebears. Drawing on archival material, contemporary publications, and family papers where sources about the Kennedys’ early years are scant, Thompson provides solid historical context about the plight of Irish immigrants, roiling national politics, and changing demographics.
A lively biography of an iconic family before it became famous.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-43769-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1174
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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