The Kennedy Complex

Robert Kennedy: His Life, by Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 509 pp., $28)

OURS is an age preoccupied by the notion of paradox in human character. The lives of simple, forthright people interest us only when enterprising writers are able to discover the incriminating clue, the louche confession, the suitably disguised signal from the hidden soul that it is, despite appearances, tormented. Biographer Edmund Morris seems to have been driven to despair because he was unable to uncover in Ronald Reagan any of those concealed intricacies of motive and desire that excite the interest of contemporary readers. Bookstore shelves are heavy with analyses of complicated presidential minds like LBJ’s, Nixons, and Teddy Roosevelt’s; relatively straightforward figures like Eisenhower and Reagan command a more slender literary tribute.

About the Author

Michael Knox Beran

Michael Knox Beran, a lawyer and writer, is the author of WASPs: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy.

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Robert Kennedy: His Life, by Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 509 pp., $28)

OURS is an age preoccupied by the notion of paradox in human character. The lives of simple, forthright people interest us only when enterprising writers are able to discover the incriminating clue, the louche confession, the suitably disguised signal from the hidden soul that it is, despite appearances, tormented. Biographer Edmund Morris seems to have been driven to despair because he was unable to uncover in Ronald Reagan any of those concealed intricacies of motive and desire that excite the interest of contemporary readers. Bookstore shelves are heavy with analyses of complicated presidential minds like LBJ’s, Nixons, and Teddy Roosevelt’s; relatively straightforward figures like Eisenhower and Reagan command a more slender literary tribute.