The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America

I was very involved in this campaign and was present at the Ambassador Hotel on June 4th. We saw the Senator in various motorcades in Los Angeles and many of us worried about his availability and the people's access to him.

This book brought me back - it helped get me passed the end of the story and to remember the excitement and promise of the campaign.

One of my earliest memories, at about age 4, is looking over a sea of people at a 1968 Hubert Humphrey rally. My folks were good establishment democrats. They'd also been huge King followers, and had been to the March on Washington. His death was the seminal political event I heard as a young child. They'd been a fan of JFK, of course, but I curiously had heard little of RFK from them. I suspect his death, as it did for so many, sunk them into cynicism and resignation.

This book, then, was a revelation to me. Clarke's narrative moves along at breakneck pace mirroring RKF's ferocious but brief campaign. He brings the campaign to life, and what a ride it was. Though RFK is the central figure, the real story is America itself. He writes of RFK's ability to transcend multiple segments of the American populace----------minorities, liberals, rural folk, blue-collar workers, and big business republicans. The campaign was like a religious revival weekend, and the folks at his rallys seem hungry for spiritual redemption. And that seems to me the larger message of Clarke's book. As American's we so deeply want to feel good about ourselves and our country. RFK connected with this. I read this book to understand the social and political climate of the late 60s. But I came away with a deeper understanding of the American identity. Reading it in the middle of the Obama campaign was particulary gratifying.

"Presidential campaigning at its best. Clarke gives all the inside scoop on why Bobby Kennedy ran against an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, and took away the momentum from Eugene McCarthy. Great listening."

The author does a good job of sharing the essence of Bobby Kennedy; particularly while he was running for the nomination to be president. I had forgotten his focus on the poor and minority; "The least of these" so to speak.

I felt that the opening chapter or Forward was a good summary of his attitude and focus. I was reminded of Barak Obama when he first began his campaign. Obama needs to get back to that, to inspiring us!

I am a veteran of the Korean Police Action from 1950 to 1954. Two of my sons were in the service during the Vietnam fiasco, so much of this book was very familiar to me as a father. Two other sons were planning to go to Canada when the war was stopped. I compare the Iraq involvement with our involvement in Vietnam. This book is a good review for all of us.

I'm not American, nor was I alive when RFK was murdured, but this book made me travel along with all the Kennedy entourage during those 82 days of campaign (the part that described the death, and aftermath, of Martin Luther King made me feel all the emotion people must have felt), and more that that, gave me the precise picture of what RFK wanted to America, in one word, his philosophy. Even if you have already read more about RFK will not be disapointed.