Author: Joe McGinniss
Narrator: Cotter Smith
Abridged: 5 hr 25 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: 08/26/2008
Genre: True Crime
From Publishers Weekly McGinniss's biography of Edward M. Kennedy is a salacious read containing the things that make a bestseller: sex, incest, money, politics, power, compelling personalities. The problem, though, is, can you believe McGinniss? Although the bibliography lists 73 titles, there is not one footnote. There are juicy tidbits about members of the family. Joseph Kennedy progresses from a WW I draft dodger to U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James. He beds innumerable women, manipulates the stock market, becomes a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite. Rose is portrayed as the ultimate holder of Irish grudges: when her husband had his stroke she delayed calling a doctor while she played golf. A devout Catholic, she was actually happy about Joe's affairs because then she didn't have to sleep with him. Retarded Rosemary was lobotomized because she was considered a less-than-perfect Kennedy. There are dark hints that Joseph may have had an incestuous relationship with her. Sexual innuendo is rampant throughout the book. When McGinniss finally gets around to concentrating on Ted, we are given a picture of a lonely boy raised by servants. The first crisis of his life comes when he is expelled from Harvard for cheating. His father was furious, but only because Ted got caught. We see Ted as an ineffective campaign manager for JFK in 1960 and we see him being forced by his father to run for JFK's former Senate seat in 1962. In 1968 after RFK's assassination, Ted turned "reflexively, to women, alcohol and other drugs." The book ends with the Chappaquiddick tragedy in 1969 and the questions raised by Ted's alibi. Thus the biography misses Ted's presidential campaign in 1980 and the events surrounding the rape charges against his nephew William Smith in 1991. Employing journalistic histrionics and amateur psychology in his attempts to find what makes this family and this one man obsessed with winning at all costs, McGinniss concludes that the Kennedys are all-American frauds. The reader will wonder if McGinniss isn't one also. First serial to Vanity Fair; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club Super Releases; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection; NBC miniseries; author tour. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
BY THE AUTHOR OF THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, Douglas Preston presents a...
Nicholas Pileggi’s vivid, unvarnished, journalistic chronicle of the life of Henry Hill—the working-class Brooklyn kid who knew from age twelve that “to be a wiseguy was to own the world,” who grew up to live the highs and lo...
A number-one bestseller from coast to coast, Den of Thieves tells, in masterfully reported detail, the full story of the insider-trading scandal that nearly destroyed Wall Street, the men who pulled it off, and the chase that finally brought them to...
Ann Rule was working on the biggest story of her career, tracking the trail of victims left by a brutal serial-killer. Little did this future bestselling author know that the savage slayer she was hunting was the young man she counted among her clos...
From trust to terror... from security to survival... The author of The Stranger Beside Me brings her brilliantly informed understanding of the sociopath to this riveting true crime collection. Only Ann Rule, who unknowingly worked alongside the sma...
I'll be watching you.Walking home on a dark night, you hear footsteps coming up behind you. As they get closer, your heart pounds harder. Who is closing in with dangerous intent—a total stranger? Or someone you know and trust? The answer is as...
He has hunted some of the most notorious and sadistic criminals of our time: TheTrailside Killer in San Francisco, the Atlanta Child murderer. He has contronted,interviewed and researched dozens of serial killers and assassins -- includingCharles Ma...
Fatal Vision is the electrifying true story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the handsome, Princeton-educated physician convicted of savagely slaying his young pregnant wife and two small children, murders he vehemently denies committing.
United States of True Crime is an anthology series with books devoted to the most disturbing cases in each of the 50 states. This book focuses on ten of the most chilling crimes in Arizona history.The cases included in this book:Winnie Rut...