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using promises and threats to get done what he wanted to get done.

My only caveat is that Michael Bechloss included many unnecessary footnotes. He assumed his readers were ignorant, yet a book like this is generally only attractive to people who only need the more obscure items footnoted.

On the Kennedy years, I read The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh. Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who first broke the My Lai Massacre story during the Vietnam war. In The Dark Side of Camelot, Hersh exposes the myth of Camelot. He reveals Kennedy as a person who took too many risks, many of which jeopardized our nation's security. It reveals that he was careless about whom he went to bed with, was obsessive about killing Fidel Castro after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and used his father's money to help buy the 1960 election. While the book was controversial when it was published, Hersh presents a case that is difficult to refute.

One of the books I read about President Nixon was Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962, by Stephen Ambrose. What Ambrose does well is show the development of Richard Nixon's personality from the time he was a child. He reveals the effect of the death of Nixon's brother on Nixon, his incredible work ethic, and the skills he developed in his high school and college debating society.

Ambrose also shows Nixon's obsession with politics and winning. Nixon had a different personality than Lyndon Johnson, but they both shared an obsession with winning and both were masterful politicians. Both ended their careers as tragic figures.

Kennedy was a tragic figure also. The tragedy of the Kennedy years, however, was the result of an assassin's bullet. What Seymour Hersh points out in The Dark Side of Camelot is that Kennedy might not have been re-elected in 1964. Allegations about Kennedy's many affairs, indirect ties to the mob, attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, and many other aspects of his character were about to be revealed by his enemies when he was killed.

The assassination of Kennedy kept people quiet, out of respect for the dead and for Mrs. Kennedy. If Kennedy had lived, he might very well have ended his political career as an outsider or outcast like Johnson and Nixon. Instead he was mythologized and it would take thirty years before Seymour Hersh would dare attack that mythology.

Of course, I read many other books in 2008, but these were among my favorites, and I highly recommend them to anyone who loves reading about American History. In 2009 I plan to read the third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, and I will read the fourth volume as soon as it is published.

Learn more about this author, Dan Weaver.
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