About this title: In this Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, John F. Kennedy tells the stories of eight U.S. senators who put principle above popularity. Kennedy singled out John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Edmund G. Ross, Robert A. Taft, and four other individuals who risked their political lives to embrace their most heartfelt beliefs.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Cardinal ed.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Pocket Books, New York
Date Published: 1963
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Minor creases and wear on binding and cover. This edition boasts a classically mid-century cover design! xx, 233 p., [8] p. of plates: ill., ports.; 17 cm. Giant Cardinal edition; GC-238. Includes: Illustrations, Portraits, Plates. Includes numerous references to Daniel Webster. Includes index. Bibliography: p. 215-226. read more
Edition: [Memorial ed.].
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper & Row, New York
Date Published: 1964
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. 287 p. port. 24 cm. Includes Portraits. Bibliography: p. 269-281. Nice copy. Very clean and crisp type. Mo marks, tears or folds inside or out. read more
Edition: A Cardinal Edition; Sixteenth Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Pocket Books, Inc, New York, NY
Date Published: 1961
Description: Covers very worn and creased, large mark on front cover; spine very worn & reader creased; pages creased and bent and yellowed due to age, good reading copy. Mass Market (Rack) PB, glued binding, 234 pages Forward by Nevins, Allan; black & white photographs read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc
Date Published: 1967
Description: Acceptable. 7th Prt'g. Water damage/stains. Cover very worn; most of spine rubbed/worn through; half back cover detached. Creased. Yellowed. Good for a reading copy. read more
Edition: Cardinal ed.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Pocket Books, New York
Date Published: 1963
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Slightly warped. Reading copy. xx, 233 p., [8] p. of plates: ill., ports.; 17 cm. Giant Cardinal edition; GC-238. Includes: Illustrations, Portraits, Plates. Includes numerous references to Daniel Webster. Includes index. Bibliography: p. 215-226. read more
"I learned a few things from listening to this book. First of all, JFK Jr. had a very pleasing voice. Secondly, I got an inkling as to how some of my students must feel when they read something and can't understand all of it. I mean, I got the general idea: the book profiles 8 senators from the 19th and early 20th centuries who showed courage and didn't back down in what they believed in and stood for. I got that. But JFK had quite a vocabulary and wrote in such complex ways sometimes, that without seeing the sentences and being able to go back and reread parts that I didn't quite get (add in confusing political stuff; politics always confuse me), I was forced to be content with picking up the main gist of things. Which was hard for me because I'm such an anal reader. I was even a little glad when disc 3 was defective and kept freezing up and I had to abandon it and skip ahead to disc 4. Don't get me wrong: I love John F. Kennedy (and we share the same birthday). It's just that this book was difficult for me to get through. I feel a bit unpatriotic confessing this."
"While I like reading auto-biographies, I have never been one to enjoy the history writings of biographies. I like history, know it's important, want to know it, but have never much liked the sterile style of writing often seen in historical stories. I'd rather watch it than read it. Still this is a very fascinating book - as much because of the author as the actual stories. Seeing what the future President viewed as courage made me re-think what I view as courage and what is what I see as right and wrong in today's political climate. Perhaps a dry read, yet an important read I believe, for Americans."
""It is not true, in fact, that any people ever existed who love the public better than themselves." -President John Adams
But what differentiates the senators of whom Kennedy writes is not that they love the public--it's that they love themselves enough to uphold their ideals even when all their constituents rail against them (even threatening to lynch them).
Here is a book not of right or wrong or even necessarily of sound judgment, but of American leaders standing up with courage and faith in the face of resounding pressure and odds.
Not a big fan of historical texts or of Kennedy's writing (and the theme is endlessly repetitive), but this is an important book for its time and offers interesting insight into Kennedy's character and motivations before he was President."
"One of my favorite books of all time, even though I strongly suspect it was actually ghostwritten by Theodore Sorensen, rather than by JFK himself. I admire courage as the noblest of human virtues, and even though we love to denigrate politics and politicians, it is a virtue which manifests itself in that arena, too -- and probably more often than we realize. I have often said that if I were a high-school civics teacher, I might make this book required reading. I recommend it."
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