Editors Reads Verdict
Goodwin's ambitious multigenerational narrative traces the two families that merged in the marriage of Rose Fitzgerald and Joseph P. Kennedy, and whose children and grandchildren would shape American political life for half a century — a landmark work of American family biography.
What We Loved
- The multigenerational scope gives depth to the Kennedy story that most single-generation accounts lack
- Goodwin's access to family papers and intimate sources produces genuinely new material
- The Irish-American immigrant experience is given full historical weight as the foundation of the family's drive
Minor Drawbacks
- At nearly 1,000 pages the book demands significant commitment
- The focus on the founding generations means JFK's presidency receives less space than some readers want
Key Takeaways
- → Ambition transmitted across generations is among the most powerful forces in American political life
- → The Irish Catholic immigrant experience of exclusion and resentment shaped the Kennedys' political identity profoundly
- → Joseph P. Kennedy's complicated legacy — his ambition, his anti-Semitism, his driving of his sons — shaped everything that followed
| Author | Doris Kearns Goodwin |
|---|---|
| Publisher | St. Martin's Griffin |
| Pages | 932 |
| Published | January 1, 1987 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography, History, American Politics |
Two Families, One American Story
The story of the Kennedys is one of the defining American stories of the twentieth century, but Doris Kearns Goodwin understood that to tell it properly you had to go back further — to the immigrant boats from Ireland, to the wards of Boston, to the ambitions and resentments of men and women who knew they were kept out of the drawing rooms of Yankee Boston and made the determination that their children and their children’s children would not be.
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys begins with the Irish Famine generation and traces both families through more than a century — John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, Rose’s father, charming his way up through Boston’s Democratic machine to become Mayor; Joseph P. Kennedy accumulating the wealth and connections that would fund his sons’ careers while never quite escaping the social exclusion that had defined his own ambitions; and then the sons themselves: Joe Jr., Jack, Bobby, Ted.
The Weight of the Patriarch
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. is the book’s most complex figure. Goodwin does not spare him: his anti-Semitism, his dealings with bootleggers during Prohibition, his appeasement sympathies as Ambassador to Britain, his driving of his sons toward the political achievement he could not himself attain. But she also renders him as a product of his history — a man whose early experiences of exclusion created a hunger for respect that wealth alone could not satisfy.
The relationship between Joseph Kennedy and his sons, and particularly his response to Joe Jr.’s death in the war, is rendered with full psychological complexity. The weight of the patriarch’s ambition on the sons who survived — and the ways in which Jack Kennedy had to escape that weight to become his own man — is one of the book’s central dramas.
A Foundation for Understanding
The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was Goodwin’s first major work, and it shows both the ambition and the occasional unevenness of an early book. But its research is genuinely exceptional — Goodwin had extensive access to family papers and intimate sources — and as a foundation for understanding why the Kennedys were the way they were, it remains indispensable.
Our rating: 4.4/5 — An ambitious multigenerational biography that illuminates the Irish-American foundations of one of America’s most consequential political families.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" about?
An epic multigenerational saga tracing the rise of two Irish-Catholic Boston families — the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys — from immigrant poverty to the pinnacle of American political power.
What are the key takeaways from "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys"?
Ambition transmitted across generations is among the most powerful forces in American political life The Irish Catholic immigrant experience of exclusion and resentment shaped the Kennedys' political identity profoundly Joseph P. Kennedy's complicated legacy — his ambition, his anti-Semitism, his driving of his sons — shaped everything that followed
Is "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" worth reading?
Goodwin's ambitious multigenerational narrative traces the two families that merged in the marriage of Rose Fitzgerald and Joseph P. Kennedy, and whose children and grandchildren would shape American political life for half a century — a landmark work of American family biography.
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