MP3 Audios - Biography

An Unfinished Life is the first authoritative single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written in nearly four decades. Drawing upon firsthand sources, freshly unearthed documents, and never-before-opened archives, prizewinning historian Robert Dallek reveals more than we ever knew about Jack Kennedy, forever changing the way we think about his life, his presidency, and his legacy.

An Unfinished Life describes the birth of the Kennedy dynasty, the complexity of Jack's early years, and the mixture of adulation and resentment that tangled his relationships with his mother, Rose, and his father, Joseph. Forced into the shadow of his older brother, Joe, Jack struggled to find a place for himself until World War II, when he became a national hero and launched his career. Dallek reveals for the first time the full story of Kennedy's wartime actions and the true details of how Joe was killed, opening the door to Jack's ascendancy.

Here is the gripping story of Jack's transformation from an awkward speaker to a brilliant politician with irresistible charm. An Unfinished Life carries us from Jack's work as a senator from Massachusetts, through the fiercely contested 1960 campaign against Nixon, and takes us on to the White House itself An Unfinished Life also discloses for the very first time that Kennedy was far sicker than we ever knew. While laboring to present an image of robust good health, Kennedy was secretly in and out of hospitals throughout his life, so ill that he was administered last rites on several different occasions. Here is a vivid portrait of a man who, because he knew how close he was to death, lived as much as he could - sometimes hurting others in the process.

Never shying away from Kennedy's weaknesses, Dallek also brilliantly explores his strengths. The result is a full portrait of a bold, brave, human Kennedy, once again a hero. An Unfinished Life is the account Americans have been waiting forty years to hear. Now, at long last, we have the definitive audio biography of Jack Kennedy.