Jack by Herbert S. Parmet

The Struggles of John F. Kennedy

A richly researched, sympathetic yet critical biography that traces the rise of John F. Kennedy from a privileged Irish-Catholic Boston family through wartime heroism and his early congressional and senatorial careers to the hard-fought 1960 presidential campaign, detailing his political skill and ambition alongside persistent personal vulnerabilities—chronic health problems, marital strains, and private insecurities—and showing how family dynamics, advisers, and necessary compromises shaped the contrast between his charismatic public image and the often difficult, behind-the-scenes struggles of his political life.