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

The book does not let the reader forget how it is going to end by opening the first chapter with the recollections of some of those on the funeral train fron New York to Washington. What is found between those images and the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel is an honest look at the promise of what might have been had RFK not been led to his rendevous with death in that hotel pantry. We are able to watch Bobby Kennedy mature from being JFK's brother to becoming a leader in his own right. America and the world lost a champion forty years ago. What a different world this might now be.

Unscripted before it became a look that politicians tried for. Thats the feeling of RFK one gets from reading this book. It is VERY interesting to read this from today's identity politics standpoint. The author points out that RFK took some heat from middle class radicals for seeming at times to pay heed to the law and order counterforce that was sweeping the land after the violence of the 67' 68. RFK's response is quite interesting. The author quotes him to the effect of "McCarthy can be Mr. Pure, because he's never done anything for Civil Rights. I've got to show working class whites that I can be for them too" (not a direct quote)

The book is fascinating. It can be read as a spontaneous effort to keep the class cement of the the New Deal
Coalition fresh, even as race and right wing demagogues and media were set to blow the house down. Yet, ironically RFK does not come accross as a preserver, but a creator. He seems spontantous, and unpredicatale the way he told audiences what they didn't want to hear but also gave a sense of what was possible if they heard it. Weirdly, they were thrown off by the RFK's honesty, because it was an honesty about inequality almost never heard from a person whose voice was allowed on national media, the real electorate.

Want to know how a poltician can have the highest ever low income African American Support and also win Very White Indiana on the C-Word, Class? Read this book. Today's Corporate Democrats don't want THAT oil and water to ever mix again! Mixing that is what got him killed as the excellent new book by Shane O'Sullivan shows yet again. Be sure to also read Who Killed BobbyWho Killed Bobby?: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy

Brilliant and Evergreen: excellent research, compellingly told history of what could have been for you, for me, for the United States.

Lately I have been fascinated reading about the decade of the sixties, the decade before I was born. The ground work for today's events was laid during that revolutionary decade when everything changed. If I could go back in time and live through one decade it would be the 1960's. that being said I was very ignorant of Robert Kennedy. I knew he was JFK's brother, that he was Attorney General, and that he had been assassinated running for President. In this book Clark brings to life the final 82 days of Kennedy's campaign for the Presidency. Bobby raised the national conciseness on the lightening rod issues of poverty, the war in Vietnam, and race relations. He saw that the United States could do better and he gave hope that the promise could be delivered. His life was cut short by an assassin's bullet but his dream lives on. This book goes far in reminding us of Robert Kennedy's historical importance and I think everyone in my generation should read this book.

I worked on RFK's '68 campaign and have always been interested in accounts of it. Two journalists who covered the campaign, Jack Newfield and Jules Witcover, wrote excellent memoirs about it at the time. Forty years later, one has to ask what remains to be told.

A great deal, it turns out. Mr. Clarke's account is extraordinary in its depth and balance. For me, he has recreated the time and the man better than anyone else ever has. Reading this book, for me, was like reliving the campaign, with its exultation and ultimate desolation. An extraordinary achievement.