THE SENATOR. My Ten Years with Ted Kennedy

New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. First Edition, first printing. Illustrated with black and white photographs printed on glossy plates. 8vo, publisher’s original black boards backed in navy blue cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine. In the original dustjacket featuring photographs in colour and black and white. 328 pp. A fine copy in fine dustjacket. FIRST EDITION. In 1971 as a freshmen at Georgetown University, Richard Burke volunteered at the offices of his political idol, Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Over the next four years he would become one of the Senator’s closest staff members and then in 1977 become Kennedy’s personal assistant. A year later, in 1978, he would be appointed Administrative Assistant, the youngest in the U.S. Senate. Burke held that appointment until 1981.
For nearly an entire decade during his professional association with Senator Kennedy he was considered the right-hand of one of the most powerful men in American political life. His book is not only a biography, or a study of politics... it is an experience, through the eyes of a young man, marked with exhilarating highs and tragic lows, of falls from grace and remarkable recoveries.