Burton Hersh's newest book 
PETER GOLENBOCK (author of The Mickey Mantle Novel): "There are a thousand Kennedy books and hundreds of books on the FBI, and I've read a lot of them, but none has what this one has: the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. J. Edgar Hoover, the protector of our country, was no such thing, it turned out." Source: www.amazon.com PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM "Historian and journalist Hersh (The Old Boys) might well have titled his excellent book 'Collision Course,' for that is exactly what J. Edgar Hoover and the Kennedys were on from as early as the 1930's... What Hersh brings to the party is important new reseaarch and intensive analysis..." Source: www.publishersweekly.com |
"Utterly enthralling and absorbing..." — Joe McGinniss, author of Fatal Vision "Burton Hersh has brought to life the dark and secret world of American intelligence in its formulative years. It is a breathtakingly comprehensive piece of research and a miracle of lucid writing." — Daniel Schorr, Senior Political Analyst for NPR "...skillfully captures what is probably the most important conclusion to draw about Donovan, Dulles, and Wisner:...extensive research and interviews begin to yield valuable insights." — The New York Times Book Review |
for its secret operations? Read 
|
|
PRESS RELEASE - BOBBY AND J. EDGAR With compelling new research, Burton Hersh, historian and author of the acclaimed The Old Boys, sheds light on the complex relationship between Robert F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover and the grand master of them both: Joe Kennedy. Told in intimate anecdotal detail, Bobby and J. Edgar (Carroll & Graf, 0-78671-982-6, June 8ne 2007) is set against the ongoing context of Joe Kennedy's behind-the-scenes manipulation of key players in Congress, organized crime, and his own family, tracing RFK and J. Edgar's early years in politics through their parallel rises to power and controversial deaths. Burton Hersh had started out intending to document the corridor battles between the aging J. Edgar Hoover and his bumptious attorney general after 1960, Robert F. Kennedy. As the author of two books, twenty-five years apart, about Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Hersh has deep scholarly and in many instances abiding personal contacts with many of the surviving figures in the Kennedy power structure. Furthermore, Hersh's 1993 group biography of the founders of the CIA, The Old Boys, has long since emerged as definitive in the field, and put him in touch with key personalities all around the intelligence community. Old FBI hands especially like to joke about the sparks that flew when Bobby and J. Edgar collided. As he began to work his way through thousands of heretofore classified Bureau files as well as masses of previously unreleased letters and documents in the Kennedy library, the author began to realize that there was an unsuspected level - without question, the key level - at which Joseph Kennedy operated. Even cautious historians have recently begun to admit that the ascending financier may indeed have dabbled in bootlegging, but FBI records and newly available sources now make it more than plain that Joe depended on gangland contacts throughout his tumultuous career. Even more surprising, a number of his strategies involved his long-time crony J. Edgar Hoover, who himself traded favors regularly with senior Mafia luminaries like Frank Costello, in fact a partner of Kennedy's in a succession of investment spanning forty years. Out of these intense covert associations came initiatives for which the country is still paying, from McCarthyism to the Bay of Pigs to the Vietnamese war. They would also contribute, directly, to the assassinations of two of his sons. What makes this story especially fascinating was the decision by the immature and unhappy Robert Kennedy to push as staff lawyer in the Senate for a wholesale assault on organized crime in America, focused especially on mobsters who - Bobby still didn't know - were his father's associates. How this played out provides the thrust behind this astonishing narrative. Widely recognized for his outrageous novels, Hersh brings his gift for the anecdotal and the unexpected turnabout to every page. Once Bob became attorney general, certain of the compounding contradictions became only too plain. Before long the wily FBI director had both the Kennedy brothers under control, Bobby because of his implication in the death of Marilyn Monroe and JFK as a consequence of his affairs with syndicate moll Judith Campbell Exner and East German courtesan Ellen Rometsch. As Hersh now sums it up, J. Edgar Hoover was "...a bigot, a hypocrite, as unembarrassed a glory-hog as every rose in public office, a blackmailer of truly fiendish reach, a soft touch for anybody with something for him, and a pretentious dresser who smelled much of the time of perfume." Still, the crusty autocrat had a feeling for civil liberties that Bob Kennedy sometimes lacked. Events and the sheer momentum of their rivalry worked to produce the first true federal confrontation with organized crime at the boardroom level and the campaign which shredded the Ku Klux Klan and so made racial equality possible in America. |
Copyright ©2007 Tree Farm Books. All rights reserved. Last updated 05.15.07