The Last Brother

In The Last Brother, McGinniss brings to life the childhood, the brief triumph & the long downward slide of the last Kennedy brother, exposing the chilling reality behind the glittering facade of America's 1st Dysfunctional Family, as well as the terrible cost of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's dark ambitions for his children—even the last & least of them. His book focuses in particular on the extraordinary 60s, a decade that began in glory for the family with Jack's ascension to the presidency, & ended—after the murders of Jack & Bobby, the tragedy at Chappaquidick & their father's death—with Teddy, the last brother, standing alone in the rubble of Camelot. While The Last Brother is both shocking & newsworthy, Teddy Kennedy emerges as a curiously tragic figure, the victim of his own family, forever "the fat, awkward little boy" who was ignored by his siblings, his father & his mother, then propelled, unwilling & unprepared, into the public limelight. Searing, yet strangely moving & even sympathetic, The Last Brother presents a detailed, tragic portrait of a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers, trapped in the glorious but hollow Kennedy myth, longing—but unable—to escape.