A life so consequential, and by turns tragic and triumphant, is catnip for biographers. Yet when an editor asked John A. Farrell to tell Kennedy’s story, Farrell wondered: Is there anything fresh to say? ... He correctly decided there was ... The book is perhaps strongest in Farrell’s accounting of the complex relationship between Kennedy and Nixon ... No hagiography ... The many paradoxes of Ted Kennedy are reflected here.
Teddy lived long enough for his flaws to be fully exposed. All are laid bare in this book — the drinking, the infidelity, the selfishness, the casual cruelty, the emotional isolation ... More than just a personal profile, Farrell’s book revisits the origins of policy debates that still divide the country ... Farrell mined historical archives from North Carolina to Kansas to California and many points in between. The result of his research is nearly 600 pages — not counting an extensive index and collection of source notes — that burst with detail ... Farrell manages to unearth new tidbits about one of the most scrutinized lives in American politics.
Farrell writes briskly and clearly, and despite its girth his book never feels overlong or uninteresting. Sometimes, indeed, one craves more ... Farrell [links] Kennedy’s personal travails to liberalism’s woes in these years. The strained claim is unpersuasive, even glib.
Conventional ... Greatness is always a subjective judgment and, apart from the skillful exercise of power and premier celebrity status, any verdict on Kennedy is subject to qualifications ... No score is too trivial to settle, no epithet too scurrilous to avoid. The authors’ sources lean toward partisans ... Ted Kennedy deserves better.
Sweeping ... Farrell is not afraid to examine complicated aspects of Kennedy’s life, which makes this biography worth the time of any reader interested in our nation’s political history ... Farrell’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of our era, and in understanding a complex figure whose policy achievements were as numerous as his vices.
Farrell can, in his sympathy for his subject, let Kennedy’s core failings seem incidental, to soften terrible behavior with a kind of dictional lotion and to dispense forgiveness even before laying out the particulars of an offense ... The accomplishments did accrue, and Farrell does a particularly good job of highlighting the largely forgotten work Kennedy did on behalf of the world’s refugees ... Farrell can be tough, here and there, about the matter but his heart isn’t in the indictment. The facts of Kennedy’s behavior may be there on the page, but they always seem to be soothed toward absolution by Farrell’s tone ... His long, flagrantly unfaithful marriage to the tormented and alcoholic Joan Bennett makes for consistently painful reading ... Farrell performs a lively reconstruction of Kennedy’s losing challenge to the incumbent Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980, capturing the men’s petty and mutual miscomprehension, along with their essential difference ... Once in a while Farrell adds too many ruffles and flourishes to his prose...But for the most part Ted Kennedy is a sturdy, if partisan, production. The ampleness of Farrell’s research attests to both his Ph.D. in history and his long career as a political reporter. It is his misfortune to be publishing this book only two years after the first volume of Neal Gabler’s Ted Kennedy biography appeared, and just weeks before the second one is due. Farrell’s is a sensibly shorter single volume, but both biographers see their subject in terms of redemption — Kennedy’s determination to expiate personal failings through legislative good works ... An almost pastoral perspective still governs tellings of Edward Kennedy’s life, and so long as it remains in place, the subject, fairly or not, can’t really lose for winning.
With hundreds of books published about the Kennedy dynasty, it may seem that there is nothing new to be learned, yet Farrell’s focused and canny research produced a fresh, multifaceted portrait of a man conflicted by history, stalked by demons, and dedicated to ideals. Equitable and discerning, Farrell’s nuanced biography is a valuable addition to the Kennedy canon.
Farrell...untangles in this masterful account the complex blend of political dexterity, recklessness, and unflagging support of the less fortunate that defined Ted Kennedy’s rise ... Evenhanded ... The book shines in its vivid accounts of backroom political dealmaking, as Farrell enlivens his exhaustive research and expert analysis with a novelist’s pacing. The result is the definitive one-volume biography of a consequential American lawmaker.
