Kennedy Without Incense

Four of last year’s ten best-selling books were by or about the late President Kennedy—all of course favorable and some a good deal more than that. Six other Kennedy books, ranging from neutrality to the most abandoned praise, were also high up on the list of most demanded volumes. In the book world as elsewhere, it was the year they deified John Kennedy.

For readers open to the suggestion that Kennedy, for all his virtues, was not a divinity come to earth, some countervailing analysis is now available in a slim volume entitled The Leadership of President Kennedy, by Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Lane U.S.A. (ret.). General Lane, columnist for the St. Louis Globe Democrat and other papers, has undertaken a hazardous task. The elaboration of the Kennedy godhead, the vulgar effort to make political capital out of his tragic death, the vicious attack on all who differed with his policies, have created a kind of national obsession with which no cautious man will tamper. But General Lane is not a cautious man.

MS

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M. Stanton Evans

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Four of last year’s ten best-selling books were by or about the late President Kennedy—all of course favorable and some a good deal more than that. Six other Kennedy books, ranging from neutrality to the most abandoned praise, were also high up on the list of most demanded volumes. In the book world as elsewhere, it was the year they deified John Kennedy.

For readers open to the suggestion that Kennedy, for all his virtues, was not a divinity come to earth, some countervailing analysis is now available in a slim volume entitled The Leadership of President Kennedy, by Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Lane U.S.A. (ret.). General Lane, columnist for the St. Louis Globe Democrat and other papers, has undertaken a hazardous task. The elaboration of the Kennedy godhead, the vulgar effort to make political capital out of his tragic death, the vicious attack on all who differed with his policies, have created a kind of national obsession with which no cautious man will tamper. But General Lane is not a cautious man.