David Talbot Reading at Brookline Booksmith

David Talbot will be reading from Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years at Brookline Booksmith tomorrow, May 8, at 7:00 pm.

The Kennedy clan is well-trodden ground. Sometimes it seems as if there's a tome dedicated to every single Kennedy, no matter how insignificant. But Salon founder and former editor-in-chief David Talbot shines a light on the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and his brother, attorney general Bobby Kennedy.

The excerpt of the book available at Salon (of course) demonstrates Talbot's ability to turn JFK and RFK, who have been elevated to the level of myth, back into vulnerable flesh-and-blood. In the excerpt, Talbot focuses on RFK's actions following JFK's assassination and how RFK became "America's first assassination conspiracy theorist."

Yet a tangle of politics and bad timing forced RFK to hold his tongue and wait until he had the power of the presidency to get justice. Talbot captures RFK's strangled situation by transcribing an RFK speech in Northridge, CA: "There is no one who would be more interested in all of these matters as to who was responsible for uh…the uh, uh, the death of President Kennedy than I would." Talbot leaves in the stutter, just as he leaves in all the little details that strive to show the Kennedys as people, not just as myth.

Image of Brothers from Amazon.