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22, 1963, a date he never failed to notice but never marked in public. Gillon, to be sure, understood the ambitions and agony of his subject - how Kennedy never lost the essential insight that he was born with his celebrity but also needed to earn it how despite the money and the attention from the public, every life was conducted in private, with its own trials how (and this is particularly effectively rendered) the warp, woof - and warping - of Kennedy’s life could be traced to the early afternoon of Nov. Gillon knew the rewards and risks of this undertaking, and in many ways “ America’s Reluctant Prince” is a fond and admiring adieu to a friend. (Even with the line from “Windy” that asks: “Who's reachin' out to capture a moment?” – which in the very best reading of this book, may be what Gillon aspired to achieve.) Then again, so did the late 1960s sunshine pop band the Association, but nobody would get tenure for a book on the group. And his subject did, in fact, both capture and create the public zeitgeist. His subject was, indeed, a reluctant prince, and hence the beguiling title of this book. The bigger question is why a historian of Gillon’s profile and provenance would undertake a project like this, sure to have a popular audience, and also sure to prompt sneers from the faculty lounge.īut Gillon is right about many things. The small questions involve lapses in clarity (Ben Bradlee was not the editor of The Washington Post when President Kennedy was in office) and overreaching assertions (it’s an overstatement to say that JFK Jr.’s enrollment at Brown changed the profile of the Providence university). But, like the tragic disappearance of Kennedy’s plane, small questions remain, and a bigger question is unavoidable. Gillon has a historian’s instinct (gather every known piece of evidence, examine every primary source, interview every possible witness, get prized access to Secret Service files) and he marries it with a memoirist’s sentiment (add personal reminiscences, slice in a few personal reflections) and the result is a brisk and engaging read.
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