Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House

If you want endless details of who dined or partied at the White House, who Jack Kennedy was sleeping with, and what Jackie was wearing when it happened, this book is for you. It's chock full of details about everything and everyone. I was shocked by some of the revelations, and it was fairly titillating; however it is so badly read with endless mis-phrasing and mispronounced words and names, that I nearly gave up on it several times. It was interesting, but a real chore to listen to it. I came away thinking what venal, selfish and self-absorbed people they all were.

Very personal portrait of the Kennedy years: factual but not judgmental. Good balance of politics, current events and "gossip". Well read and worth listening to the unabridged version, although admittedly long. Pedantic in spots, particularly in foreign affairs analysis, but quickly returns to the original pace.

Five Stars: Well written and very well spoken; interesting aspects of their lives described vividly (almost as though you were watching a movie or an excellent t.v. production. Brilliant. Well worth reading several times.
Highly rececommend.

Yes and again and again. So much to process in the political world. Fascinating!

I would say the three aspects I would use are "history, the value of education and the value of connections".

I enjoyed the details provided by Smith--she really gets down the day-to-day information.

Didn't read the print version.

I consider myself a JFK aficionado. So when I saw this book available on audible, I decided to pick it up. Rather than being just a rehash on the same old stories we know about JFK, the author really delves in into what made JFK tick. We are constantly reminded how flawed and careless he was in his personal life, considering he was the President of the United States. We know now that no public figure could get away with his behavior today. But in spite of all that, he was a great president when you consider all the challenges he faced during his administration.

The author puts the reader in every scene as if we were there, from the moment the book opens, moving through the 1960 election, the inauguration, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Vienna Summit with Khrushchev, the Berlin Wall crisis, Civil Rights, the Cuban missile crisis, his assassination and the aftermath. She does a masterful job in presenting every scene with clarity and from the various perspectives of the individuals involved, be it Jackie Kennedy, Dave Powers, LBJ, etc.

She set just the right tone that at first when I downloaded the audiobook, I thought it would take me forever to get through it. Instead, I listened to it in less time than I expected during my routine commute time.

The Real JFK

Great book! I'd recommend it to anyone who is a JFK fan.