Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy

New York: Dial Press, 1980. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. George Tames (Front of Jacket photograph). 24 cm. xvii, [3], 586 pages. Illustrations (jacket states 32 pages of photographs). Some wear and soiling to DJ. Herbert Samuel Parmet (Stylized as Herbert S. Parmet) (September 28, 1929 - January 25, 2017)[1] was an American writer, biographer, and distinguished historian most notable for his works of writing on American presidents. In total, Parmet would author and co-author a total of 11 books throughout his vocation, mostly regarding politics and the lives of American presidents such as John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Glen Macnow of the Detroit Free Press described Parmet in his writings about Kennedy as someone that "...remains detached from the Kennedy mystique, portraying the man as neither a hero of Camelot nor a woman-chasing scoundrel." and that "Above all, Parmet avoids romanticizing JFK." Macnow's approved of his impartiality in his work on Kennedy, Derived from a Kirkus review: Parmet draws a fair, unflattering, portrait of Joe Kennedy: anti-Semitic, vaguely pro-German, a social climber, ceaseless womanizer, and aggressive paterfamilias who pushed publication of John's Harvard honors thesis (Why England Slept) and generally shoved his son into public life. Also familiar are the competitive pressures he fostered within the family, his vision of Joe, Jr., as the future president, and wife Rose's role in keeping the family together. Parmet makes much of JFK's repeated hospitalizations, and their complications. These physical problems were hidden by public shows of vigor and touch football. The other plot-peg--first featured in the Blairs' 1976 The Search for J.F.K.--is a woman named Inga Arvad, a Danish journalist with a shadowy, Nazi-tainted past. JFK had an affair with her in 1941, when he was a Navy ensign. As part of a security check, the FBI got on to the liaison; and though Joe was instrumental in having Jack shipped off to the Pacific to break it up, those FBI files came back to haunt the younger Kennedy, who feared that J. Edgar Hoover would leak them. Indeed, Joe's presumed pro-German sentiments were always in the background waiting to explode all over JFK's career. Mixed into Parmet's account of Kennedy's House and Senate history, which is thorough. Altogether, Parmet's text is nice and tidy, with intermittent discoveries and nothing to upset the "realist" view of JFK.