John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography: By the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best

Rating:
Summary: A Reporters View
Review: Full Title: John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best -- I got this book the same day that I received a piece of hate e-mail about Kerry talking about the day in Viet Nam where he got "a bandaid and a Purple Heart." So I was interested to see what this book said about this incident.

I was pleased to see that the authors, reporters all, reported the incident in a manner that reflects cautious research. They seem to report, without a personal bias, what everyone they could find had to say. The book contained neither the venomous hatred of the e-mail, nor the gushing praise of a political press release. They do make the ocassional comment, 'we asked the Kerry campaign about this but received no reply.'
The rest of the book is done the same way, it neither praises nor condemns, it reports. It appears to be an excellent summary of the man's life. We will see, in the political silly season of the second half of 2004 lots of claims, accusations and downright lies. This book provides a good basis for trying to come up with the truth.

Rating:
Summary: Dissecting the Democratic Presidential Candidate in 2004
Review: I have read many biographies of political candidates. Almost all such biographies are either puff pieces or hatchet jobs. This biography by contrast is of a different sort, a detailed "who," "what," "when," "why," and "how" the Democratic presidential candidate arrived where he is today. The look is a revealing one that will be helpful to those who want to make a more informed decision about whom to vote for in the coming election. It's well worth your time to read this book.

The authors are three reporters who developed a detailed series on Senator Kerry for the Boston Globe last year. Since then, the series has been expanded and extended to create this volume. The work is much more complete than I expected.

Although I am from Massachusetts, I didn't feel like I knew very much about Senator Kerry before reading this book. Now, I realize why I had this feeling. Senator Kerry hasn't really spent a lot of time in the state except during the period from when he first ran for the House of Representatives until he was elected to the Senate. His father was a foreign service official, and Senator Kerry often lived in foreign lands or at prep schools in either Switzerland or New Hampshire (the Saint Paul's school). He attended college at Yale (where he was a member of the select Skull and Bones) and left there for Vietnam. After he became a senator, most of his time was spent in Washington or in foreign travel. Senate President Billy Bulger used to kid Senator Kerry that part of his district was in Nicaragua.

The book told me quite a few things I didn't know. To me, a man named John Kerry is probably an Irish Catholic. Well, that's not the case. Senator Kerry knew that his father's parents came from Austria and had changed their names. But until the Globe did their research, he did not know that these grandparents had been Jews who converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution. In addition, and also not known to the senator, his paternal grandfather had earned and lost three fortunes and in despair committed suicide in the Copley Plaza hotel in Boston. I also didn't know about what his duty had been in Vietnam, and came away amazed that he survived the suicidal mission of running the small boats on small rivers to draw enemy fire. How awful it is that our men were asked to do that! During the primary campaigns last winter, I thought that the senator looked like someone suffering from cancer. But I didn't realize that he had just been operated on to remove an early stage cancer of the prostate. His family connections fascinated me, as well as his many contacts with famous politicians at an early age.

I also learned that Senator Kerry is a thorough, nuanced thinker who has trouble articulating his complex views into a three word "sound bite" that is so popular with television and newspaper reporters. That matched the impression I had of him when I spent a day at the U.S. Senate in 1987 meeting a number of the leaders there. My host was a Republican and Senator Kerry was the only Democrat invited to attend the function. Clearly, Senator Kerry had made an impression on his colleagues . . . with whom he often differed on foreign affairs.

I enjoyed reading about his visible role in the anti-Vietnam war movement, his attempt to broker peace in Nicaragua, his support for intervention in Serbia and questioning about the first Iraq war.

The book portrays Senator Kerry as an opportunist who is consumed totally by his passion to become president of the United States. I think that portrayal would probably apply to almost everyone who ever ran for president, so I didn't take much away from that point. I was more impressed by the way that he has been a conscience for our country in avoiding foreign conflicts (something George Washington also warned against), opposed institutional forces that can drive a nation to war against the will of its people and sought novel solutions to long-standing problems (such as normalizing relations with Vietnam).

I looked in vain in the book for a sense of his political platform during this election campaign. I had been very impressed by his thinking in reading the new book by Senator Kerry, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, and looked in vain for references to his ideas in this book. I graded the book down one star for missing this obvious part of his biography.

I also faulted the book for failing to compare Senator Kerry to his obvious peer, the President of the United States, who followed him by two years at Yale. Those comparisons would have made the book fascinating reading.

May our nation make a brilliant decision in choosing who will lead us beginning in 2005.

Rating:
Summary: Not like Maraniss
Review: I went out and bought this after Michiko Kakutani gave it a positive review
(New York Times, May 4, 2004). Because she compared the Boston Globe series
on John Kerry (by these authors) to a series by David Maraniss on Clinton in
the Washington Post, I was thinking it would be like "First in His Class",
a probing, interesting book.

I preferred Maraniss' detailed exploration of the formative period of Clinton's
life. Sixty pages into this book Kerry's already done with college; Maraniss
spends more than 200 pages on this same period of Clinton's life.

It does provide a detailed look at Kerry's political career in particular.
The book seems to try to be fair, by reporting material both for and against
Kerry. I would have preferred more analysis of the critics arguments, rather
than just taking them at face value.

For instance, on page 334, they mention Kerry supporting 1.5 billion in cuts
to intelligence over 5 years. But out of how much, and with what impact to
the existing program? A number like this is meaningless without this context.

All in all, it is a good, clear introduction to the stream of external events of
John F. Kerry's life.

Rating:
Summary: Too obviously written by the reporters who dislike him most.
Review: The book starts off strong. Kerry's childhood and family background are extremely interesting and tell much about the person he is today. Once the "biography" hits Kerry's college years, though, it stumbles. The authors make no bones about their feelings toward Mr. Kerry, which ruins much of their credibility. The reader should be left to his or her own skepticism or approval of Kerry's actions during college, his service in Vietnam, and his post-tour political activity; instead, the authors make their own doubts plain. This only gets worse as the authors troll Kerry's political and personal life since the mid 1970's. Had they stayed the course of the earlier part of the book, it may have been great; as is, it reads as a jealous valentine by the Globe staff. They never miss a chance to point out their own smug self-righteousness. It's too bad they didn't put their efforts toward demystifying an enigmatic public figure instead. Postscript: there are numerous grammatical errors in this book--much like one would find reading the Globe on any given day.

Rating:
Summary: A must have for any 2004 voter!
Review: This biography is an essential one for those planning to vote in November 2004--or anyone looking for a complete, thorough biography of this complex man. The authors have mastered turning the careful and precise reporting done on the June 2003 Boston Globe special series on Kerry into a full biography. This is a detailed, specific account of every aspect of Kerry's life.