Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975
by Edward Kennedy
- New
- Condition
- New
- ISBN 10
- 0307405451
- ISBN 13
- 9780307405456
- Seller
-
Brooklyn, New York, United States
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About This Item
New. New Catching the Wind is the first volume of Neal Gabler's magisterial two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy It is at once a human drama, a history of American politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and a study of political morality and the role it played in the tortuous course of liberalism
Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father's fortune and his brothers' coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom saw-a man both racked by and driven by insecurity, a man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed The last and by most contemporary accounts the least of the Kennedys, a lightweight He lived an agonizing childhood, being shuffled from school to school at his mother's whim, suffering numerous humiliations-including self-inflicted ones-and being pressed to rise to his brothers' level He entered the Senate with his colleagues' lowest expectations, a show horse, not a workhorse, but he used his "ninth-child's talent" of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator And with the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, he was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission
In Catching the Wind, Kennedy, using his late brothers' moral authority, becomes a moving force in the great "liberal hour," which sees the passage of the anti-poverty program and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts Then, with the election of Richard Nixon, he becomes the leading voice of liberalism itself at a time when its power is waning: a "shadow president," challenging Nixon to keep the American promise to the marginalized, while Nixon lives in terror of a Kennedy restoration Catching the Wind also shows how Kennedy's moral authority is eroded by the fatal auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, dealing a blow not just to Kennedy but to liberalism
In this sweeping biography, Gabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America
Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father's fortune and his brothers' coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom saw-a man both racked by and driven by insecurity, a man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed The last and by most contemporary accounts the least of the Kennedys, a lightweight He lived an agonizing childhood, being shuffled from school to school at his mother's whim, suffering numerous humiliations-including self-inflicted ones-and being pressed to rise to his brothers' level He entered the Senate with his colleagues' lowest expectations, a show horse, not a workhorse, but he used his "ninth-child's talent" of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator And with the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, he was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission
In Catching the Wind, Kennedy, using his late brothers' moral authority, becomes a moving force in the great "liberal hour," which sees the passage of the anti-poverty program and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts Then, with the election of Richard Nixon, he becomes the leading voice of liberalism itself at a time when its power is waning: a "shadow president," challenging Nixon to keep the American promise to the marginalized, while Nixon lives in terror of a Kennedy restoration Catching the Wind also shows how Kennedy's moral authority is eroded by the fatal auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, dealing a blow not just to Kennedy but to liberalism
In this sweeping biography, Gabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America
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Details
- Bookseller
- Amazing Bookshelf, Llc (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 34156
- Title
- Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975
- Author
- Edward Kennedy
- Book Condition
- New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- ISBN 10
- 0307405451
- ISBN 13
- 9780307405456
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Amazing Bookshelf, Llc
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