The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America

Additional The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America Information

The definitive account of Robert Kennedy’s exhilarating and tragic 1968 campaign for president—a revelatory history that is especially resonant now

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy—formerly Jack’s no-holds-barred political warrior—almost lost hope. He was haunted by his brother’s murder, and by the nation’s seeming inabilities to solve its problems of race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Bobby sensed the country’s pain, and when he announced that he was running for president, the country united behind his hopes. Over the action-packed eighty-two days of his campaign, Americans were inspired by Kennedy’s promise to lead them toward a better time. And after an assassin’s bullet stopped this last great stirring public figure of the 1960s, crowds lined up along the country’s railroad tracks to say goodbye to Bobby.

With new research, interviews, and an intimate sense of Kennedy, Thurston Clarke provides an absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of America’s deepest despairs—and most fiercely held dreams—and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened personal, racial, political, and national dramas of his times.

What Customers Say About The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America:

This is an amazing book, worth reading and re-reading. Unfortunately Amazon has stupidly priced the Kindle version of the book at nearly $4 above the paperback. So buy the book, not the Kindle version.

This book provided insight into the change both politically and morally in RFK from his days as Attorney General to his run for the presidency in 1968. The change from his brother's gunslinger to a man with this own agenda and ideals for this country is very interesting. This book provides an inside glimpse of that metamorphesis and the danger it wrought to those who did not want to see him succeed. A very good book.

The author doesn't have the most engrossing style (he's very factual but gives no description of places or people, focusing instead on what RFK did and whom he talked to), which makes it difficult to visualize some of the scenes. This is a moment-by-moment account of RFK's 1968 presidential campaign. But the book remains spellbinding because one knows what is going to happen and we see fate running its course while the protagonists do not. If you've never read anything about RFK, you might want to start with something else, such as "Robert Kennedy" by Evan Thomas. The book could have benefited from tighter editing at times (the author occasionally uses the same quote several times, for instance when he mentions twice within a few pages that one of RFK's aides was "shook, really shook" at Martin Luther King's assassination), but maybe the book was put together hastily given the "hope phenomenon" created by then Presidential Candidate Barack Obama - hope that RFK best embodied before him. The book does succeed in distilling for us who RFK was in the last months of his life, especially emphasizing his stance against poverty. It provides only a limited picture of the man as a whole, but it is a very inspiring book nonetheless.

A well researched book about the Last days of kennedy's campaign that led to the tragedy in California. Some times a little one sided in the Senator's favor but over all a good read and full of information and snippets of apeeches that convinc the reader of the worth of the man and the strength of his message.I reccomend this book to all who appreciate the excitemnet of the campaign trail.

I was very involved in this campaign and was present at the Ambassador Hotel on June 4th. We saw the Senator in various motorcades in Los Angeles and many of us worried about his availability and the people's access to him.This book brought me back - it helped get me passed the end of the story and to remember the excitement and promise of the campaign.