In The Last Brother, Joe McGinniss brings to startling and disturbing life the childhood, the brief triumph, and the long downward slide of the last Kennedy brother—and exposes the chilling reality behind the glittering fa├ºade of America's First Dysfunctional Family. McGinniss also reveals the terrible cost of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's dark ambitions for his children, even the last and least of them. This book pays particular attention to the extraordinary sixties, a decade that began in glory for the family with Jack's ascension to the presidency, and ended—after the murders of Jack and Bobby, the tragedy at Chappaquidick, and their father's death—with Teddy, the last brother, standing alone in the rubble of Camelot.
While The Last Brother is both shocking and newsworthy, Teddy Kennedy emerges as a curiously tragic figure, the victim of his own family, forever the "fat, awkward little boy" who was ignored by his siblings, his father, and his mother, then propelled, unwilling and unprepared, into the public limelight. Searing yet strangely moving and sympathetic, The Last Brother presents a detailed, tragic portrait of a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers, trapped in the glorious but hollow Kennedy myth, longing—but unable—to escape.
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"One of the best books I have ever read. Its just amazing what you could get away with back before 24 hour news channels. Funny how the old man paid such a high price to have his family in the lime light and his boys running for the highest office in the land."
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Shane (5 out of 5 stars)