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About This Book:
Goodreads Summary
✥Stand-Alone
✥Release Date: 10/26/16
✥Format: Hardcover
✥Setting: N/A
✥Page Count: 272
✥Genre(s): Non-Fiction, Biography/Auto-Biography/Memoir, History
✥Date(s) Read: 6/24/18-6/26/18
✥Rating: Book: 5/5 Audio: 5/5 Narrator(s): Lorna Raver
My Thoughts:
Audio:
She had a wonderful voice for this book. I loved did love listening to her. For a bit, I actually thought it was Ms. Kennedy reading this book (before I looked up who was reading). The voice of an older woman reading for another older woman (for those who are easily offended, I am not saying old but older. It is not negative by any means because she is a woman of older years. 90 years old as of this post).
Book:
I always loved John & Bobby Kennedy. I just never looked into their family. Not really. If someone had asked how much I knew about them, I would honestly say, little to nothing other than the little I studied about them during JFK's presidency and a little about Bobby running. Of course, about their unfortunate and untimely deaths.
Then I see this book...
Which made me want to read it (of course) and also made me want to take a closer look into the lives of this family. Even if I don't go into everyone's lives, I'd still love to know more about Bobby & JFK. Maybe even Teddy's.
I have always had a love for studying the Civil Rights Movement (C.R.M.)/Jim Crow era and naturally, the Kennedy brothers were a part of that. The more I began to look into JFK, I began to see, he was fighting for more than just the C.R.M. and those reasons may have been the larger reason of why he was killed. Which made me want to read this even more. To see how he may have been raised.
I haven't studied the C.R.M./Jim Crow era in a long while now. Not that I lost interest, just other things were picked up over the years. Now, it's definitely time for me to pick it up again. And this is one great way to start. Plus, going into it a little further and maybe looking into the Harlem Renaissance era and much more.
What I thought of the book itself:
I enjoyed this book as much as I had hoped. It wasn't a love but it was still really good in my opinion. Well worth the read knowing they had a not perfect but still very happy upbringing. Mother and Father were strict but loving. Made sure they were well rounded in many different areas (which is how many ended up in politics because of the debates and discussions the parents had with their children).
For two people who had nine children, the way Jean Kennedy Smith described the family, they did really well balancing it all. Well, as well as you can balance two adults with nine children! Hell, it was hard for me having just two that were 5 (almost 6) years apart! How they did it, I don't know but from what I read in this book, they all seemed to have come out pretty well balanced. Naturally, there were some mistakes made along the way, as there are no perfect parents/families but seemingly a little less dysfunction than some others.
This book gave me more respect for a family that I already had respect for and more understanding of rumors about the father being almost "abusive". It seems from me, that the parents were just "take no nonsense" type of parents and with nine children, they had to be I'm sure or they would have run all over their parents.
I'm glad that I found this book. It makes me want to look for more (hopefully by actual members of the family as it's hard for me to read books about people outside the family because sometimes those books aren't always written with the best interest of the family/person it is written about. Yes, I know that knowing different sides of situations are a good thing but I like knowing family/personal history told by family/person first before going to other venues to learn about said family/personal history)
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