The House of Kennedy

by James Patterson

Overview

Now with an all-new bonus chapter—in the bestselling The House of Kennedy, “James Patterson applies his writerly skills to real-life history . . . re-telling the political clan’s rise and fall and rise again (and fall again) with novelistic style” (People). 
 
The Kennedys have always been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel, living by the dual family mottos: "To whom much is given, much is expected" and "Win at all costs." And they do—but at a price. 

Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have occupied a unique place in the American imagination: charmed, cursed, at once familiar and unknowable. The House of Kennedy is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most storied family, as told by America's most trusted storyteller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316702836
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	28,251
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

James Patterson is the world's bestselling author. The creator of Alex Cross, he has produced more enduring fictional heroes than any other novelist alive. He lives in Florida with his family.

Hometown:

Palm Beach, Florida

Date of Birth:

March 22, 1947

Place of Birth:

Newburgh, New York

Education:

B.A., Manhattan College, 1969; M.A., Vanderbilt University, 1971

Website:

http://www.jamespatterson.com

Editorial Reviews

"When I wrote my first novel after several nonfiction works about politics, James Patterson lovingly lambasted me for infringing on his thriller territory. Now I know how he feels as he crosses into political nonfiction with this juicy and entertaining look at a family that continues to wield power and influence. He's too good—it isn't fair!" —Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and author of The Hellfire Club

From the Publisher

2020-05-06
Humdrum history of the Kennedy clan.

Joseph Kennedy is reputed to have made some of his early fortune in bootlegging during Prohibition, a claim that scholars such as David Nasaw have painstakingly examined—and largely dismissed. Patterson and Fagen skip by the matter, though their book is chock full of other salacious and lurid moments. What is certain is that the patriarch himself wasn’t sure how much he was worth, protesting to his wife, “How could I tell you, when I didn’t know myself?” It’s possible he was shielding the figures for dark reasons, but not divorce. The Kennedys were devout Catholics, and even when Joseph, as a film studio executive, tried to convince his sometime lover Gloria Swanson to have a baby with him, he could be sure that his home life wouldn’t be disrupted. Not so the next generation. The central conceit of the book is that there really is something to what Ted Kennedy once wondered aloud—whether “a curse actually did hang over all the Kennedys,” à la the House of Atreus. Considering what happened—assassinations, accidental deaths, all sorts of misadventures and legal scrapes, and lashings of hubris—Ted’s remark has weight, even if, as the authors breathlessly report, he got caught up in a cheating scandal that put him two years behind in school. There’s not much of serious note that other biographers and historians haven’t addressed, and much better, and the authors’ intent often seems to be simply to shame their subjects: “ ‘Kennedys don’t fail,’ his uncle Ted tells him. Yet David has failed sobriety over and over.” “Trust me, that one is all smoke and mirrors,” says Ethel Kennedy of Carolyn Bessette. And so on—and on and on.

A tabloid-worthy approach to a subject that has filled many shelves with more substantial works.

Kirkus Reviews