Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History
by Ted Sorensen

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ted Sorensen
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN: 0060798718
Number of pages: 576
Publisher: Harper

Book Reviews of Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

Book Review: A Great Read. Buy it.
Summary: 5 Stars

A thoroughly enjoyable read if you are interested in the JFK era. Sorensen loved (in the most genuinely platonic sense) his hero Kennedy. While some of his praise for the assassinated President borders on cloying, the overall book is an excellent read. As a keynote speaker, (I reference the Kennedy brand in a jaundiced manner in Why Ireland Never Invaded America) I have a deep and abiding fascination for great wordsmiths and by any standards President Kennedy's Counselor is a great speech writer.

The author shows us how he and Kennedy wrote some of their great speeches. He is extraordinarily self-effacing in terms of his own contribution to Kennedy's work. This is most obvious when discussing Profiles in Courage where despite all evidence to the contrary, he still maintains Kennedy was the sole author of the book because it was his (Kennedy's) ideas and direction that produced the book. Maybe so, but there is not another person alive today who would not at least claim co-authorship if he or she were to contribute as much as Sorensen did.

He would never claim to be objective about JFK, which I accept, but this lack of serious objectivity stretches to almost anyone bearing a Kennedy name as he provides brief commentary on RFK, Ted and Jackie Kennedy.

As with most Kennedy fans, he suggests his boss would have kept the US out of Vietnam. Who knows? But the facts are that the domino strategy ruled American policy at that time, the people who convinced LBJ to get more involved in Vietnam were not dissimilar to Kennedy's team e.g. Robert McNamara, and North Vietnam would never have settled for anything less than a unified country in order to finish a war it believed was a war of independence.

Proof that opposites attract find evidence in the Kennedy / Sorensen relationship. To put it gently, Sorenson comes across as intense, boring and not particularly popular as he jealously guarded his extremely productive relationship with Kennedy. One could query how Sorensen was so effective given the level of apparent adulation that comes across in the book, but he was. He was hugely effective and a man whom Nixon, LBJ and others wished was on their side to advise them.

Even though he comes across generally as dry, he does have a wicked sense of humor and recounts some very humorous anecdotes about his time in Washington.

I skimmed his early life and was tempted to leave the book once he was finished with JFK. I'm glad I did not. One of the most fascinating chapters relates to his nomination for Director of CIA. The bottom line is that Jimmy Carter had not done his homework before nominating Sorensen. The nasty world of politics halted the nomination because Sorensen was a conscientious objector. This riveting chapter shows the dirtier side of politics and some of the blatant hypocrisy that pervades Washington.

Overall, a top class read. Buy it.

Summary of Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history.

Sorensen returns to January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage. Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitions—from a failed bid for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 to the successful presidential campaign in 1960, after which he was named Special Counsel to the President.

Sorensen describes in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK during some of the most crucial days of his presidency, from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies.

Illuminating, revelatory, and utterly compelling, Counselor is the brilliant, long-awaited memoir from the remarkable man who shaped the presidency and the legacy of one of the greatest leaders America has ever known.

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