08-12-2017, 08:06 PM
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:I usually do not post something in JFK forums which is not intrinsically about President Kennedy.
But John Bohrer's book The Revolution of Robert Kennedy is so exceptional that I have to. Bohrer's intent was to show how, under the stress of what he saw Johnson doing to President Kennedy's legacy, Bobby Kennedy felt forced into making explicit the differences between the two. In that sense, the book is really about JFK.
Three things we should all note. First, like many others i had been brainwashed into thinking that RFK did not come out against the war until 1967. Complete and utter BS. Bobby Kennedy was telling Johnson in 1964 that he should not be militarizing the situation in Indochina. In 1965 he urged LBJ to call a bombing halt and when it ended he predicted a catastrophe in the making. In 1966, he called for a coalition government which included the communists, and was savagely attacked by people in his own party, like HHH. (BTW, when I asked Bobby Kennedy Jr. about this, he said, "Oh yeah Jim, he was fully aware of what my uncle was doing in Vietnam.")
Second, RFK was appalled at what LBJ and Thomas Mann did to JFK's Alliance for Progress program in Latin America. The things he said and did on his journey there were so incendiary, literally inciting to rebellion, that the American papers would not report it. That chapter is worth the price of the book.
Third, the visit to South Africa in 1966 was a something like a work of art. The speech he made at the University of Cape Town is an unknown classic since the government put a press boycott on his visit.
If you read no other biography of RFK, read this one. As said, it shows us how a good man became a great man.
https://kennedysandking.com/robert-f-ken...rt-kennedy
Thanks for sharing this gem, Mr. DiEugenio,
should our electronic paths not cross again until sometime next year, all the best to you & yours for a safe & happy holiday season right into the coming new year. All the same for everyone else here too. Cheers!
Soooo happy ::dancing guy:: RFK is emerging out of his big brother's loooong shadow as a great man in his own right. Rose and Joseph P., Sr. struck gold twice. RFK! RFK! RFK!