The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America by Thurston Clarke

From the Publisher

The definitive account of Robert Kennedy’s exhilarating and tragic 1968 campaign for president—a revelatory history that is especially resonant now

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy—formerly Jack’s no-holds-barred political warrior—almost lost hope. He was haunted by his brother’s murder, and by the nation’s seeming inabilities to solve its problems of race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Bobby sensed the country’s pain, and when he announced that he was running for president, the country united behind his hopes. Over the action-packed eighty-two days of his campaign, Americans were inspired by Kennedy’s promise to lead them toward a better time. And after an assassin’s bullet stopped this last great stirring public figure of the 1960s, crowds lined up along the country’s railroad tracks to say goodbye to Bobby.

With new research, interviews, and an intimate sense of Kennedy, Thurston Clarke provides an absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of America’s deepest despairs—and most fiercely held dreams—and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened personal, racial, political, and national dramas of his times.

Publishers Weekly

Forty years before Obamamania, there was another White House run that was so frenzied, reporters feared they'd be crushed to death by the electrified crowds he generated. Clarke's encyclopedic study of that short-lived, 11th-hour bid in the spring of 1968 reminds listeners that Robert F. Kennedy understood that the fanaticism toward his campaign was a transmutation of the grief the nation felt over the assassination of his brother. In less than three months, RFK became presidential in his own right, inspiring Americans with both his message of hope and unparalleled oratory gifts. It's precisely this finesse with speech that proves the greatest challenge for this audio: Pete Larkin's reading of Kennedy's addresses simply can't compete with the late politician's familiar delivery. Larkin has the daunting task of calibrating his tone so as to match the optimism of the campaign's first 81 days, while acknowledging the horror of day 82. Without doing impersonations, Larkin uses slight pitch changes to differentiate between Kennedy and others. A Henry Holt hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 31). (June)

Kirkus Reviews

Tremendously moving chronicle of Bobby Kennedy's 1968 run for president. Addressing the needs of a "wounded nation"-mired in the Vietnam War, complacent about poverty and inequity-Senator Kennedy announced his candidacy on March 16, 1968, offering to lead America back to "those ideals which are the source of national strength and generosity and compassion of deed." Clarke (Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech that Changed America, 2004, etc.) follows on Bobby's heels as he plunged headlong into his campaign, from Kansas and Indiana to Oregon and California, throwing off his brother's mantle and becoming at last his own man. He spoke passionately, almost recklessly, inciting crowds to frenzy with his idealistic speeches about the moral shame of Vietnam, the needs of the poor and minorities and the responsibility of each American. Incorporating accounts by a gamut of reporters, politicians, family and "Honorary Kennedys," as well as extracts from Bobby's own stunning stump speeches, Clarke compellingly recreates this "huge, joyous adventure." Seized by grief and guilt over his brother's assassination and morally opposed to the war and to President Johnson's reelection yet unable to reconcile himself to Eugene McCarthy's candidacy, Kennedy (but not all his advisers) decided it was now or never, and his gradual but determined evolution into a fearless, formidable, winning candidate makes stupendous reading. Johnson's decision not to seek reelection robbed him of an antagonist, but when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Kennedy quelled riots with his heartfelt speeches and become King's "real successor." Many worried that King and JFK would not be the last; Clarke quotesaheartbreaking comment from one reporter, who dubbed Bobby's decision to campaign virtually unprotected by security as "slow-motion suicide." The hope he inspired, though eclipsed by his assassination on June 6, still proves instructive and pertinent, especially in this election year. Generous without being slavish, beautifully capturing Kennedy's passion and dignity. Agent: Kathy Robbins/The Robbins Office

Product Details

• ISBN: 0805077928
  
• ISBN-13: 9780805077926
• Format: Hardcover, 336pp
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
• Pub. Date: May 2008
• Sales Rank: 707

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents