A little too obsessed with JFK's sex life to the expense of any real analysis of the more important and major events of his time in office.

I liked this biography of JFK. It was very readable and took care to give you the historic background to the many 20th century events that shaped his life and presidency. It didn't ignore the salacious details of his life but didn't dwell on them either. It gave you a better picture of his often precarious health then one would ever imagine looking at him. In the end, I was sad that it appeared that he and Jackie did not have a mature, loving marriage. And that he was killed just when he seemed to be growing into the presidency.

(⭐⭐)
Il mio professore di Storia Contemporanea era solito ripetere, con malcelato disprezzo nella voce, che John Fitzgerald Kennedy fosse strato il presidente americano più sopravvalutato, "perché era belloccio ed è morto giovane".
E confesso che parte della mia ammirazione per JFK si fondava esattamente su questi due superficiali motivi, per cui,, sebbene il libro in sé non mi abbia entusiasmata, è servito quantomeno ad un rapido ripasso della storia americana del tempo.
Il difetto principale di questa biografia è il fatto di concentrarsi per lo più sulle circostanze storiche nelle quali Kennedy era inserito, dilungandosi in particolare economici e burocratici che possono fare la felicità del lettore già esperto, ma finiscono per allontanare ed annoiare chi come me desiderava più avvicinarsi alla psicologia del personaggio, più che alla sua agiografia.

"JACK: A Life Like No Other" is a fairly straightforward biography of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States. The reader is taken through the various phases of JFK's life and career. It was a life fraught with many challenges and perils, highs and lows. Throughout his life, JFK suffered from a variety of illnesses (e.g. chronic back pain which became steadily worse over time, jaundice, scarlet fever, malaria, and Addison's Disease) that would have humbled a lesser person. Indeed, on 3 different occasions, JFK had been administered the final rites by the Catholic Church. And as if by a miracle, JFK not only survived but endured. "From an early age he had known something that few rich men's sons ever learn this side of serious illness: there is no wealth but life."

While this was an easy book to read, there were some glaring errors in it that were enough for me to give it a lower grade than other books about President Kennedy I had enjoyed reading and valued for the knowledge they gave me about this singularly unique individual and statesman who had the capacity to inspire millions of people to their best efforts, and in the process, become better human beings. (Furthermore, the author's contention that President Kennedy's death was attributable to a single assassin - Lee Harvey Oswald - I don't agree with at all. Perret leaves the reader in the midst of that fatal motorcade in which the President and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took center stage on November 22, 1963, summing up the book with a novelistic flourish that struck me as somewhat overwrought.)