J.F.K. LIFE AND DEATH OF AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT. VOLUME ONE: RECKLESS YOUTH

London: BCA. Very Good/Very Good. 1993. Reprint. Hard Cover. Large 8vo Dust jacket in clear protective sleeve. Black cloth with bright silver titling on spine. No ownership marks. 898pp clean and tight. Very heavy book but will be despatched for the default charge within UK. JFK: Reckless Youth is the first volume of a monumental new biography of John F. Kennedy - a book that will alter forever our understanding of this century's most popular and charismatic American president. In retelling JFK's extraordinary life story, Nigel Hamilton has finally succeeded in getting beyond the many accretions and distortions of recent years. Here at last - often in JFK's own inimitable words - is the real John F. Kennedy, at once roguish and intelligent, reckless and yet possessing fine judgement. Based on a wealth of never previously published letters and documents, and access to more than two thousand interviews, Hamilton's portrait of the tormented, fun loving, deeply amorous, and yet ambitious youth who was John F. Kennedy, is profoundly touching. Reckless Youth is filled with intriguing new mate~ial on virtually every aspect of JFK's early years: his Boston-Irish background; his beloved grandfather Honey Fitz; his draft-dodging, swindling father, Joseph P. Kennedy; his parents' disastrous and dysfunctional marriage; his loveless upbringing; his expulsion from boarding school; his false starts at college in London and Princeton, followed by his triumphant career at Harvard; his protracted struggle against his father's defeatism and isolation before Pearl Harbour; his ceaseless career as a playboy; his lifelong battle with illness, and the origins of the deadly disease that would plague him in later days. JFK's courage, despite debilitating ill health, in joining the Navy and insisting on service in PT boats, comes to a dramatic climax with the saga of PT 109 in the Solomons - the only American vessel ever rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Against this legendary backdrop Hamilton reveals for the first time the intimate story of the greatest love of JFK's early life, his passionate romance with a suspected enemy spy, Inga Arvad. .