Massachusetts senator's life is chronicled by reporters from the Boston Globe
Comments 0 | Recommend 0
April 10, 2009 - 4:56 PM
Tim O'Brien
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy"
By The Boston Globe staff, edited by Peter S. Canellos
Compiled after Ted Kennedy's brain tumor was diagnosed, "Last Lion" details events that would have killed the career of most politicians. But not Kennedy.
There was the cheating on a Spanish test that got him booted from Harvard. The 1964 plane crash that broke his back and killed his closest aide. A nephew's rape trial. And, of course, the car crash on Chappaquiddick that led to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
"Last Lion" explores all of these incidents, and it doesn't give Kennedy a hometown discount.
If you want a peek inside the American left's royal family, this is a must-read, with details that only Boston Globe reporters know. Ted was the only Kennedy who seemed to relish his mother's daily notes about his grammar and appearance. Before the assassinations, "Teddy was the one who brought joy and laughter - not order - to the family," the authors write. He didn't have the gravitas of his brothers. What he does have is a record of legislative achievement.
At the funeral of his nephew, John Jr., Ted Kennedy said, "We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair." The fates have finally allowed a Kennedy man to comb gray hair, and "Last Lion" chronicles that life. It shows the entirety of Ted Kennedy, and that makes it a must-read for fans and critics alike.
gazette.com
But does it cover him getting booted from Yale? How about his being expelled from Choate? |
