{"id":11306,"date":"2025-07-15T09:34:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T09:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/11306\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T09:34:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T09:34:03","slug":"he-didnt-think-he-was-a-good-man-new-book-reveals-unseen-portrait-of-jfk-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/11306\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He didn\u2019t think he was a good man\u2019: new book reveals unseen portrait of JFK | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

J Randy Taraborrelli has already written five books on the Kennedy family but his sixth, JFK: Public, Private, Secret, is his first that\u2019s directly about John F Kennedy<\/a>, 35th US president from 1961 until his assassination in Dallas two years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been writing about the Kennedys from Jackie\u2019s perspective for 25 years,\u201d Taraborrelli said, referring to Jacqueline Kennedy, the first lady who lived for another 30 years after he was shot, a figure of worldwide fascination<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Taraborrelli\u2019s first book about the Kennedys \u201cwas Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot, and that was in 2000. And then I did After Camelot, which was a lot about Jackie and her marriage to [Aristotle] Onassis,\u201d the Greek shipping tycoon, \u201cCamelot\u201d the name given to the Kennedys\u2019 apparently charmed circle, in reference to the legendary court of King Arthur.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also did Jackie, Janet and Lee, which was about Jackie and her mom [Janet Auchincloss] and her sister [Lee Radziwill<\/a>]. Two years ago, I did Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, which was Jackie, cradle to grave. When that was successful, I thought, \u2018It\u2019s time to tell JFK\u2019s side of the story.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidently, Kennedy books sell. So do books by Taraborrelli, whose subjects have also included Diana Ross, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Cher and Elizabeth Taylor.<\/p>\n

John F Kennedy. Photograph: Public domain\/JFK Library<\/p>\n

For JFK, he turned to the vast Kennedy archives but also his own extensive interviews, looked at anew, and new sources including Monroe\u2019s publicist, Patricia Newcomb, now 95, and Janet Des Rosiers Fontaine, once secretary and girlfriend to JFK\u2019s father, Joseph Kennedy, now 100 years old.<\/p>\n

Readers \u201cknow what they\u2019re going to get when they read one of my books,\u201d Taraborrelli said. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be \u2026 a blow-by-blow of every moment in JFK\u2019s political history. I wanted to do more of a human portrait, something people can [use to] really sort of understand this man and like him or hate him, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taraborrelli\u2019s central theme is JFK\u2019s treatment of women.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always looked at JFK as this unconscionable cheating husband,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to maybe not defend him as much as explain him, try to get into his head and tell his side of the story. This book is really a companion to Jackie: Public, Private, Secret. When you read them both, you really get a full picture of that marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sympathetic picture. Taraborrelli\u2019s JFK is a relentless adulterer<\/a> but one who came to some realization of his weakness, through the painful consequences of his behavior, through a belatedly deepening connection to his wife, and through the trials of office.<\/p>\n

Taraborrelli said: \u201cThe thing about JFK is that as unconscionable as his actions were, he still had a conscience, which made it even more difficult for him, because if you have no conscience, then you can just be a crappy person and you\u2019re OK with it. It\u2019s when you have a conscience that it causes problems for you internally.\u201d<\/p>\n

JFK\u2019s behavior has certainly caused problems for his reputation. As Taraborrelli was writing, Maureen Callahan published Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed<\/a>, a lacerating account, ceding nothing<\/a> to the trappings of glamor and power.<\/p>\n

Taraborrelli did not read it: \u201cIf it had come out at a different time, I might have. But when books start coming out while I\u2019m working on a book, I don\u2019t even want to know what\u2019s in them, because I don\u2019t want to inadvertently repeat the same material or be in some way influenced.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also made a decision early on with JFK that I did not want [the book] to be a compendium of all of his affairs \u2026 an A-through-Z list of every woman he ever slept with, because these women, many of them have written books of their own, and many of them have been interviewed for books. Their stories have been told.<\/p>\n

John and Jackie Kennedy pose with Caroline and John Jr in Hyannis Port, in August 1962. Photograph: Public domain\/JFK Library<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to find women that made a difference, like Joan Lundberg actually made a difference in his life. Judith Exner<\/a> made a difference, though I don\u2019t believe anything she ever said about anything. She was there, you know. Mary Meyer<\/a> made a difference. Marilyn Monroe makes a difference, historically if not personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether JFK had an affair with Monroe is part of a conspiracy-laced legacy fueled by Kennedy\u2019s policies and presidency, his proximity to organized crime<\/a> (in part through Exner, also involved with a Chicago mobster), and his assassination, all of it fuel for a thriving publishing industry of labyrinthine what-ifs. Taraborrelli says he has no wish to join it. He deals with the assassination in a few final pages, pointedly ignoring old questions: did killer Lee Harvey Oswald act alone, what did the CIA know. Releases<\/a> of government files came and went. Taraborrelli stayed focused on his man.<\/p>\n

He thinks there was no Monroe affair \u2013 chiefly, though Jackie expressed concern, because no evidence exists. But Taraborrelli does say<\/a> JFK had a previously unknown affair with Lundberg, a Californian air hostess, in the 1950s, when he was an ambitious senator from Massachusetts. It ended for Lundberg with Kennedy paying for an abortion.<\/p>\n

Taraborrelli said: \u201cJFK met Joan when he was on the outs with his family. Jackie had a stillbirth in 1956 and JFK did not return from a vacation to be with his wife. It took him a week to get back. And when he got back, everybody in the family, both sides of the family, wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, Jackie\u2019s mom was so upset that she made him sleep in the servants\u2019 quarters over the garage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so he went to Los Angeles, and he met [Lundberg], and she didn\u2019t know anything about him, other than that he was a famous senator, but she didn\u2019t know him personally, and she didn\u2019t know anybody in his life. And he was able to open up to her honestly and use her as sort of a pseudo-therapist to try to work out some of his issues. And he was trying to grapple with how could he have done this to his wife?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Callahan shows<\/a>, Kennedy men doing unconscionable things to women has never been rare. JFK\u2019s nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is now US health secretary, after extensive coverage of his philandering and its tragic consequences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of JFK, Taraborrelli said: \u201cAt one point, Joan said to him, \u2018I think that you\u2019re a good person.\u2019 And he said, \u2018No, I\u2019m really not.\u2019 He did not even think he was a good man. He said he felt like he was stuck in himself and he couldn\u2019t figure out a way to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor could Kennedy\u2019s sister, Rosemary, who endured developmental difficulties and whose father arranged in 1941 \u201cfor brain surgery that went terribly wrong<\/a>, turned her into an invalid, and then he institutionalized her and told the family they needed to forget she existed, and they all did, but JFK held this shame that he let this happen to the sister he loved.<\/p>\n

John F Kennedy. Photograph: Picasa\/Jacques Lowe<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the book, you realize that if he was able to disassociate himself from his own sister, who he loved, then how was he to feel about a baby Jackie had that died, who he didn\u2019t know? It\u2019s like he didn\u2019t have empathy. Jackie realized that, so she found Rosemary, the sister [JFK] had not seen in 15 years, and she encouraged him to go to and reconnect with his sister, because she knew he could not be a fully realized man, holding this dark secret and feeling ashamed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so that was another building block. And then when their son Patrick died [living less than two days in August 1963] that was another building block.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Taraborrelli sees it, such experiences helped bring \u201cKennedy out of himself\u201d on the brink of his death, \u201cturn[ing] him into a different man, a man with good character \u2026 and so in this book, you see JFK take accountability for his mistakes. He says, \u2018The way that I was was painful, and by painful, I mean shameful.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe also takes accountability as a president when the Bay of Pigs<\/a> [the 1961 invasion of Cuba], for instance, is a disaster. It was something he inherited from [President Dwight D] Eisenhower but he didn\u2019t blame the other administration, \u2018I have to clean up that guy\u2019s mess,\u2019 all that stuff. JFK went to the American people and said, \u2018I\u2019m the president. This is my responsibility. I did this, and I\u2019m sorry.\u2019 And guess what? His approval rating went up to 85%, because people want a president who takes accountability.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he had to become a man who could take accountability first, and he did. That\u2019s a great story, and I think it\u2019s a really hopeful story to tell, especially in these days when we question what is leadership and what do we expect from our leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

JFK: Public, Private, Secret is out now<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"J Randy Taraborrelli has already written five books on the Kennedy family but his sixth, JFK: Public, Private,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-11306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}