Books
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 Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
- Pub. Date: February 2009
- ISBN-13: 9781439138175
- Sales Rank: 131
- 480pp
Synopsis
No figure in American public life has had such great expectations thrust upon him, or has responded so poorly. But Ted Kennedy — the youngest of the Kennedy children and the son who felt the least pressure to satisfy his father's enormous ambitions — would go on to live a life that no one could have predicted: dismissed as a spent force in politics by the time he reached middle age, Ted became the most powerful senator of the last half century and the nation's keeper of traditional liberalism.
As Peter S. Canellos and his team of Boston Globe reporters show in this revealing and intimate biography, the gregarious, pudgy, and least academically successful of the Kennedy boys has witnessed greater tragedy and suffered greater pressure than any of his siblings. At the age of thirty-six, Ted Kennedy found himself the last brother, the champion of a generation's dreams and ambitions. He would be expected to give the nation the confidence to confront its problems and to build a fairer society at home and abroad.
He quickly failed in spectacular fashion. Late one night in the summer of 1969, he left the scene of a fatal automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island. The death there of a young woman from his brother's campaign would haunt and ultimately doom his presidential ambitions. Political rivals turned his all-too-human failings — drinking, philandering, and divorce — into a condemnation of his liberal politics.
But as the presidency eluded his grasp, Kennedy was finally liberated from the expectations of others, free to become his own man. Once a symbol of youthful folly and nepotism, he transformed himself in his later years into a symbol ofwisdom and perseverance. He built a deeply loving marriage with his second wife, Victoria Reggie. He embraced his role as the family patriarch. And as his health failed, he anointed the young and ambitious presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom many commentators compared to his brother Jack. The Kennedy brand of liberalism was rediscovered by a new generation of Americans.
Perceptive and carefully reported, drawing heavily from candid interviews with the Kennedy family and inner circle, Last Lion captures magnificently the life and historic achievements of Ted Kennedy, as well as the personal redemption that he found.
Kirkus Reviews
A respectful but not stuffy portrait of Edward Kennedy, the playboy of legendary appetites turned senior statesman. Upon learning last spring that Kennedy had been stricken with cancer, John McCain lauded him as "the last lion of the Senate," adding that "he remains the single most effective member of the Senate if you want to get results." By this account, assembled by Canellos and a team of seasoned reporters from the Boston Globe, McCain's encomium seems right on the mark. Kennedy has been notable in pushing through a wide variety of laws and programs, particularly ones that concern health, education and workers' rights. It was not always that way. The writers portray the early Kennedy-the last of four brothers and nine children, and often the target of withering criticism-as just shy of being a wastrel, ejected from Harvard for cheating on a Spanish exam and fond of the night life. A stint as an enlisted man in the Army-during which his father pulled strings to keep him from the battle lines in Korea-helped turn him around, but he still got arrested for reckless driving even as he was preparing to serve as his brother Jack's campaign manager. Thrust into the family trade, Kennedy "walloped his Republican opponent, grabbing three-quarters of the vote" in the 1964 Senate race, and he slowly began to build a resume as a serious, studious politician-a reputation blunted but not squashed by scandals such as Chappaquiddick. Most striking about this sturdy account is Kennedy's well-practiced habit of crossing the aisle to disarm his Republican opponents with a combination of charm and arm-twisting. One unlikely ally was Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who came to Congress with a specific agendaof fighting Kennedy on every front. Another was President George W. Bush, whom Kennedy aided in pushing through the No Child Left Behind legislation-though he later "blamed Bush for reneging on his side of the bargain."A balanced, nuanced, warts-and-all portrait. Author tour to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, D.C.
From the Publisher
No figure in American public life has had such great expectations thrust upon him, or has responded so poorly. But Ted Kennedy — the youngest of the Kennedy children and the son who felt the least pressure to satisfy his father's enormous ambitions — would go on to live a life that no one could have predicted: dismissed as a spent force in politics by the time he reached middle age, Ted became the most powerful senator of the last half century and the nation's keeper of traditional liberalism.
As Peter S. Canellos and his team of Boston Globe reporters show in this revealing and intimate biography, the gregarious, pudgy, and least academically successful of the Kennedy boys has witnessed greater tragedy and suffered greater pressure than any of his siblings. At the age of thirty-six, Ted Kennedy found himself the last brother, the champion of a generation's dreams and ambitions. He would be expected to give the nation the confidence to confront its problems and to build a fairer society at home and abroad.
He quickly failed in spectacular fashion. Late one night in the summer of 1969, he left the scene of a fatal automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island. The death there of a young woman from his brother's campaign would haunt and ultimately doom his presidential ambitions. Political rivals turned his all-too-human failings — drinking, philandering, and divorce — into a condemnation of his liberal politics.
But as the presidency eluded his grasp, Kennedy was finally liberated from the expectations of others, free to become his own man. Once a symbol of youthful folly and nepotism, he transformed himself in his later years into a symbol ofwisdom and perseverance. He built a deeply loving marriage with his second wife, Victoria Reggie. He embraced his role as the family patriarch. And as his health failed, he anointed the young and ambitious presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom many commentators compared to his brother Jack. The Kennedy brand of liberalism was rediscovered by a new generation of Americans.
Perceptive and carefully reported, drawing heavily from candid interviews with the Kennedy family and inner circle, Last Lion captures magnificently the life and historic achievements of Ted Kennedy, as well as the personal redemption that he found.
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