Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

The Women’s March: A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession

By Jennifer Chiaverini.

This book features famous suffragists Alice Paul (protest organizer), Ida B. Wells-Barnett (journalist) and Maud Malone (librarian/proud rabble-rouser) over a year or so as the march is organized. The newly elected President Wilson is racist and sexist (“I’ve never thought of women’s suffrage,” he claims here) and the ladies plan a giant protest to make him think of it. Maud pesters Wilson to say something about it and gets herself into legal trouble, which I think she kinda enjoys. Ida and Alice work towards getting integration and women of color being able to protest with white women, even if the Southern delegation is, well, you know. There’s various mini-dramas going on as to who gets to carry a letter to the president (like he’s gonna care) and things like that. The author does do a nice postscript at the end as to what happened to the characters and their fight, so I enjoyed that touch. 

Honestly, it was a dutiful read, but I wasn’t totally swept away either? It’s a history book with a bit more personality. I’m interested in the suffrage movement, but felt like it was slow going to read about it, and it focuses more on the little dramas that were going on on the way to the march, because that’s where the plot is. It was an all right read, but I wasn’t blown away either, and I will probably forget about it once it’s done. Three stars. 

The First Ladies

By Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

This book covers the friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune. The two hit it off right away, and Eleanor is sympathetic to the things that Mary is. Their friendship has rocky moments off and on due to politics, of course--Mary is a dedicated Republican because at the time that's the party that's (slightly) more sympathetic to African-Americans and Eleanor wants to get her husband on board with being better on the topic. Roosevelt alternates between not being supportive and occasionally being supportive, and the way life is going does make things fluctuate here and there. But overall, the friendship is steady and strong, and it works great.

Four stars. 

Unbecoming A Lady: The Forgotten Sluts and Shrews Who Shaped America

By Therese Oneill.

This is a short, fun read, with lots of snark. Example from the first page:

"You've been compiling your near-constant failures as a woman ever since. You know what a woman is supposed to be. She takes up just the right amount of space. Small is best. You need to prove yourself worthy of the molecules you displace, madam."

I related. 

The author's thesis is that "well-behaved women almost exclusively made history. Women from Cleopatra to Ruth Bader Ginsburg found their place in history by doing what was expected and allowed--just doing it extremely well." This book covers the ones who history didn't much care for. 

Right off the bat, the book starts out with Celesta Guyer, a professional performing fat lady who really loved her career and was unashamed...until her fellow fat lady friends started dying and she successfully lost a ton of weight and kept it off. Flabbergasting. There's the Cherry Sisters, who wanted attention, even if it was negative and their acts were terrible. The creator of Lane Bryant is in here.

I enjoyed her writeup of Lillian Gibreth's career and how she had to adapt it once her husband died. Especially noticing that women won't wear ugly shoes, so they were wearing uncomfortable prettier ones and getting tireder. She improved kitchen design and menstruation products. I also cracked up at Aimee Semple McPherson and the lengths she went to to cover up an affair, including having a body double. 

Fun read, four stars. 

George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved The Monarchy

By Sally Bedell Smith.

The author certainly argues her point well on the title, I'll say. This covers the abdication of Edward VIII and how he was just really awful and everyone knew it. It's not as detailed in the terribleness as Traitor King, (thank god, I don't think I can take any more of that), but yeah, dude was shady and nobody liked him anyway, good riddance. The dude couldn't be arsed to go see his potentially dying father--Tommy Lascelles goes from finding Edward dreamy to finding him INSUFFERABLE and it's kind of funny--and Tommy snaps that if the king dying means nothing to him, it means a great deal to everyone else. Edward's response was to bang another married lady. When you find two guys saying the best thing that could happen to Edward would be for him to break his neck, HOO BOY.  (P.S. Tommy Lascelles was bi and banged a few royal biographers! Influencing the writing much?) I liked how someone saw the state crown falling apart and off the coffin when his father died. Foreshadowing! 

So up comes Bertie/the future George VI, raised to be timid, not great at military school, has a stutter, but he's nice. A lot of the first third of the book is the intriguing romance between him and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who either wasn't into him at first, and/or had other love interests (one of which the royals actually got shipped off to America!), and even though Elizabeth called him her dearest(?) friend, she really, really, really, really went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on marrying him--I note he had to propose three times before she finally gave in. I'm not sure (nor is anyone else but Elizabeth, I suppose) if her misgivings were about Bertie himself or marrying into the royal family, and even in that time period the latter was probably cause for concern. But aren't we all glad she did. 

After that, things were happy maritally and with their two daughters. The book also covers Bertie's speech therapy with Lionel Logue, so you get insight into that. Most of the book after that covers their work during World War II, living where they're getting bombed, trying to buck up the populace, etc., which is pretty heroic. (Meanwhile, Edward is being Edward and nobody wants him.) The final fourth of the book or so is Bertie's decline and death and Elizabeth's romance with Phillip. I found it all pretty comprehensive and positive.  So, four stars, I suppose. 

Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House

By Cormac O'Brien.

This is a fun, snappy, snarky book featuring fun drawings* and fun (or not so fun) facts about First Ladies. I've been reading presidential books for awhile and some of these I hadn't even heard of. There's a lot of fun lines and quips in this, albeit I was too lazy to bookmark them and frankly, there were many. Some ladies had sad lives, others were too ill and/or depressed to do much. Then you compare those to the go-getter ladies who were awesome...and usually followed up by a more "traditional" first lady, sigh. But regardless of who's being covered, it was a great fun read. Wives who never made it to the White House also get a brief page apiece.

• albeit the First Lady who crocheted a lot is shown knitting....I gotta mention that.

Four stars for me. Fun read!

The Diamond Eye

By Kate Quinn.

This is a fictionalized/slightly souped up retelling of the story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a grad student turned extremely good professional sniper during World War II. About half of the book is her life story before and in the early year or two of the war between when she decided to train in sharpshooting and when she went into the military, and the other half (interspersed) is when she's sent on a publicity tour in America in 1942, where she famously and really became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. I first heard of this on Drunk History and it's great. I love it so.

Anyway, Mila got seduced at barely age 15 by a skeezy doctor who knocked her up, abandoned her, but refused to actually go through with giving her a divorce. On her own, she raised her son wit her parents, went to grad school, wrote a comically long/apparently dull dissertation that she carried around on the battlefield while it got messier and messier (again, see below spoiler cut for remarks on this), and joined the military the afternoon that war broke out. She was an extremely good shooter and the author writes in great detail as to how it's done and what her experiences were. Mila also fell in love with a total sweetheart, Lyonya, but, y'know, warfare....

Later, Mila gets sent on tour along with her estranged husband, who's happy to sponge off her fame (I note I find it funny how she refers to Lyonya as her "husband" and yet it doesn't sound like people in fiction cottoned on to what was going on with someone with the same last name being on tour?), and Kostia, her shooting partner who was also besties with Lyonya. The two of them are already close and get closer, in a very sweet way. And the friendship with Mila and Eleanor is delightful. It starts off a bit rocky, but Eleanor is the kind of woman who will legit drop everything to sew you some clothing alternations and talk to you about how to advance your cause, and it's so sweet! Love it!

"Hello, dear," Eleanor said tranquilly, as if she hemmed pajamas for foreign-born killers every day before dinner." 

"This is one of those scenes," the President mused, rubbing his jaw with that sinewy hand, "that just defies description." 

I will address some of the fictionalized bits below the spoiler cut. I was disappointed to read they weren't real, but I think the author did an excellent job of adding the plot elements that she did and filling in the holes in Mila's autobiography.

Four stars, loved this, go read it. 

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963

By Robert Dallek.

This is the third and last JFK book I got at the library, and I've been dredging through it for months. Finally made myself plow through the rest of it's 700+ pages today. It seemed like one of those Definitive Biographies so I should read it, but I gotta admit that I preferred this one better. This was kind of a slog. I find that my experience of reading Kennedy is he's a big ol' mixed bag, an interesting personality, but I cannot find his international political dealings to be interesting to read about and that was probably 60% of it. Maybe it's just me. You'd think the Bay of Pigs thing would be gripping, but...um, nope. This is also another book in which a president was assassinated and the author has no interest in talking about it at all, which I think is ridiculous. At the very least, one should have like, half a chapter on that sort of thing. 

(I'm dreading starting LBJ, y'all. HUGE FUCKING TOMES OF LBJ, another "mixed bag" guy with a dose of large penis (literally) behavior. I think I need to go through the reviews on Best Presidential Bios first and see what looks like the most interesting before I pick at the library. That said, he reviewed this book at 4.5 stars but clearly has the same criticisms I do, so....I'll be skipping more Dallek, I think.) 

Bookmarked bits of interest:

• JFK writing letters in college was categorized by his bestie Lem Billings as "dirty," "very dirty," or "not so dirty." 
• While double dating with Lem, he'd insist that they trade identities and see how that goes. (Apparently very well for Jack.)
• 'He had so many women he could not remember their names." He was very wham, bam, thank you ma'am, 15 minutes and no foreplay. This does not sound so great for the ladies.
• One employee of his, Priscilla Johnson, asked why he kept acting like his father and getting into potential scandals. "He took a while trying to formulate an answer. Finally he shrugged and said, "I don't know really. I guess I just can't help it." He had this sad expression on his face. He looked like a little boy about to cry." 
• On his time in the Senate: "It's the most corrupting job in the world" and "I've often thought that the country might be better off if we Senators and Pages traded jobs" and "I look at the senators and I pray for the country."
• Evelyn Lincoln was his secretary. "If I had said just now, 'Mrs. Lincoln, I have cut off Jackie's head, would you please send over a box?' she still would have replied, 'That's wonderful. I'll send it right away. Did you get your nap?'" 
• JFK ducked out on voting on McCarthy, coming up with a bunch of health excuses and vague shit, but also sounds like he didn't really care. "I was in bad shape, and I had other things on my mind." 
• Lem Billings categorized J&J's marriage as "they were both actors and I think they appreciated each other's performances." 
• Chuck Spalding thought Jackie was attracted to womanizers like her dad and said it was surprising that she was so intelligent on other things, but "didn't seem to have a clue about this one." She didn't think any men were faithful to their wives.
• Jack realized if he didn't run for president in 1960, he might be too sick to do it later--legit. 
• Quote from Jackie: "I have to confess, I was born a Republican, but you have to have been a Republican to realize how nice it is to be a Democrat." 
• Bobby Kennedy drove everyone nuts by being an asshole, and there were a lot of fun nicknames about him, like "Little Brother Is Watching You," "Black Prince," and "that little shit" (Eisenhower did that one). Bobby didn't care.
• Truman on supporting Kennedy: "I never liked Kennedy. I hate his father. Kennedy wasn't so great as a Senator...However, that no-good-son-of-a-bitch Dick Nixon called me a Communist and I'll do anything to beat him." When asked how he could see Kennedy as ready for the presidency when he previously said he was too young and inexperienced, Truman said, "When the Democratic convention decided to nominate him, that's when I decided." 
• Kennedy said being a Catholic wouldn't affect his presidency and he'd resign if there was a conflict between his conscience and national interest. 
• Kennedy was Super Disturbed by the nuclear plan he inherited, which would just blow up a lot of the world. "And we call ourselves the human race," he grumbled after that.
• "Having criticized Eisenhower's refusal to act on housing by emphasizing that it required only a stroke of the pen, Kennedy began receiving pens in the mail as a reminder of his words during the campaign. In response, Kennedy "kept muttering and kidding about how in the world he had ever come to promise that one stroke of the pen." 
• Kennedy tried to intervene about trying to get a black member of the National Civil War Commission hotel accommodations. He wrote to (ahem) General Ulysses S Grant II, head of the commission, asking for equal treatment. Grant III said the commission had no business interfering in racial matters. They also moved the commemoration dinner to a segregated US naval base. This "embarrassed Kennedy and reinforced his decision to shun 'racial politics.'" 
• I'm confused on the whole Freedom Riders thing, because JFK wanted it called off, but Bobby was sending assistance (or trying to, anyway). 
• Richard Reeves: "In a lifetime of medical torment, Kennedy was more promiscuous with physicians and drugs than he was with women." JEEBUS H MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST ON THAT ONE!!!111!!!!!
• There's a lot about how when Kennedy and Khrushchev didn't get on. Fun times. At one point a guy says Kennedy seemed pretty calm during it all and Kennedy was all, "What did you expect me to do? Take off one of my shoes and hit him over the head with it?" Legit. 
• Jackie sounds like she shopped like Mary Todd Lincoln. 
• During the Bay of Pigs incident, Kennedy was calling up former presidents because only they would get what he was going through. "No one ha a right to grade a President--not even poor James Buchanan--who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made decisions." 
• Bobby met with some black activists and was continuing to be a pain in the ass, apparently. Lorraine Hansberry said, "Look, if you  can't understand what this young man" (Jerome Smith) "is saying, then we are without hope at all because you and your brother are representatives of the beset that a white America can offer; and if you are insensitive to this, then there's no alternative to our going in the streets...and chaos." 

I think I'm going to give this about 2.5 stars for interesting reading. I definitely had more bookmarked at the start of this than the middle/end of it. 

John F. Kennedy

By Alan Brinkley.

Sadly, this one was pretty boring and I found it hard to dredge through even though it is 158 pages. You'd think a mixed bag guy like Kennedy would have mustered some more interest for the author, but apparently not. And much like the American Presidents book on McKinley, the author barely mentions "oh yeah, he got assassinated" and then continued to bore me. Oh well (sigh).

 

The few interesting bits:

• Quote from Kennedy while in the hospital yet again: "I'm still eating peas and corn for breakfast and I had an enemy given by a beautiful blonde. That, my sweet, is the height of cheap thrills."
• Quote from the Harvard admissions committee: he has superior mental ability without deep interest in his studies, and "He can be relied upon to do enough to pass." By all means, please let this man in!
• Getting diagnosed with Addison's disease finally (apparently it's a hard one to pin down) finally managed to lessen all of his random issues, once he started being successfully treated for it. So, good on him there. Then again, all the cortisol treatments make you horny, baby.... but he already was, so what's the difference? And his back pain was so bad that several Secret Service agents and one doctor thought he'd be in a wheelchair if he had a second term. 
• Kennedy thought his first year in office was a disaster and when a reporter said he wanted to write a book about it, said in reply, "Who would want to read a book about disasters?"
• On civil rights, the book claims he was a supporter of them for most of his political career, even though he couldn't do much about it in Congress in the 50's. Once in the White House, he pulled back on the issue for the most part and just did small steps here and there like with regards to jobs in the government. He was pretty irritated with the Freedom Rides and how they would interfere with him working with Southerners in Congress, and kept trying to get others to stop them. When asked to desegregate all public accommodations, he snapped, "What in the world does he think I should do? I've done more for civil rights than any President in American history. How could any man have done more than I've done?" Ummmmmm..... He also wanted Sammy Davis Jr. and his white Swedish wife out of the White House and not to be photographed there. This made Jackie cry. The book says that by 1963, he was committed to ending segregation, though. 
• Famous last words: "We're heading into nut country today. But Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot at me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop him so why worry about it?" DAAAAAAAAAAAAMN. 

In the end, the author concurs that what stands out about him was the potential future of him that was ended. 

 

Two and a half stars.

Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

By Andrew Lownie.

I read this book all night when I was unable to sleep. The book certainly tried to get me there, but obviously did not work and here I am in the light of day having finished it. I listened to some podcast (British Scandal) on these two recently that was citing this book, enjoyed the interview, found it at the library.  I found it to be nearly 400 pages of slogging through how these two were stupid, drunk, rude, mean, boring, shallow, spendaholic, cheapskates, gay, obnoxious, ugly, work-shy, etc., etc. etc.....oh yeah, and they were Nazi sympathizers, too. Alas for the author, there's not enough material on that topic--the obvious inspiration for this book--to go for that many pages, so most of the book is dedicated to the incredibly shallow afterlife the two spent together after their marriage. I give the author credit for staking out a new area of material for these two that isn't usually covered, i.e. the aftermath. But lord knows it's unpleasant to read. Then again, the subject matter is terrible, so what do you expect? But even I thought some of the razzing didn't quite ring true. I don't particularly want to defend Nazi sympathizers, but god knows I've read a lot of royal stuff and I was just like, really/! to a lot of it. 

The Nazi stuff comes up early on, and is brought up again in the middle and at the end in kind of a "just to recap it" sort of way. There's certainly documentation for most of that, we know the D&D did hang out with Hitler and the Germans were kissing their booties in just the way they wanted and needed. Did they blab stuff if they knew it? Wouldn't be surprised. But the British government manages to maneuver the D&D out to the Bahamas and thus the Hitler stuff never quite comes to fruition. It's creepy and icky, but didn't exactly hurt the nation under the circumstances. A fellow named Nigel Law describes the visit as him seeing very little of real leaders and barely met the Fuhrer, and he didn't understand half of what he said or what was said to him.  When warned of the dangers of the Germans, the duchess ignored the warnings and the duke "is in such a state of intoxication most of the time that he is virtually non compos mentis." I'm still trying to figure out how "in" Wallis was with the Germans/von Ribbentrop and I'm still wanting to know how people thought she was juggling both a prince, her husband, and Mr. Nazi all at once. 

Basically the duke wanted to do a little somethin-somethin for a "job" but didn't actually want to do a job, just wanted some kind of prestigious title. He wanted to move back home and was categorically NOT ALLOWED TO. I don't see as much bitching over a lack of funds in this one that I've seen other places, but they seem to go back and forth between being cheap, sponging off others, refusing to pay debts, etc. versus doing way too much shopping. After a not-particularly-enjoyed stint in the Bahamas, "jobs" kinda ended for the duke, so they just basically threw parties and went to nightclubs until they were too ill to do so any more. Though I'll give Wallis credit for actually doing some charity work while in the Bahamas, which I get the impression she was into. 

I find it very confusing that this author has simply tons and tons of bibliographic listings at the back and all these footnotes citing sources, so you'd think at least all things here are well researched. On the other hand, he tends to throw in total rumors like "Wallis was having an affair with (insert name here, there's a lot of names floated)" and "Both of them were totally gay," and  "the Duke cheated too," and "the Duke had an illegitimate child," which I think was in there for like a page with no follow-up, without that much to go on.

I find it hard to believe that the world's most besotted dude was cheating on Wallis, especially so recently after the wedding like the author thinks or at least implies. Given that the duke had mumps, no body hair, and I guess some um, sexual issues and wasn't exactly fully manly matured (which comes up at the end), I'm pretty sure I've read elsewhere that the guy was suspected to be infertile, and we know he didn't knock anyone else up. So how much do we know about this illegitimate child? Not a lot? Hmmmm. There doesn't seem to be much evidence on most of Wallis's suspected affair partners (I'll get to the one that's covered later). The gay stuff seems to come more from the Duke having a femme-y childlike personality and Wallis being an emotional domme more than actual evidence of Wallis banging ladies or the Duke banging men. I'm not entirely sure Scotty Bowers (you may not want to Google that, I'm not gonna), sex procurer, is the world's most reliable source....? The author's convinced that Scotty told the truth in general, apparently but I'm not even sure if it was spelled out more about the D&D? Honestly, the book feels like the author threw in every tacky-ass story he ever heard about these people, and the really weird/scandalous sex shit doesn't always feel like it rings true. 

I can't help but laugh at the end of the book, in which it's debated why Wallis had a hold on him. Their emotional S&M relationship seems to be the key--he liked being bullied about--but it also gets into "sex tricks she learned in the Orient" (lol) and how only Wallis could get him off because of her special knowledge and sex games, or have they actually managed to P-i-V at all?! ... Oh my. I felt so dirty. 

About the one rumored thing that seems fairly covered is Wallis's "affair" with the extremely gay Jimmy Donohue. The three traveled around as a threesome (Jimmy footed bills and partied with Wallis all night long) for years before the duke hit his limit. I definitely got some kind of pseudo-boyfriend vibes on this one, kind of like Eleanor Roosevelt had various pseudo-boyfriends that were married, and I don't think schtupping occurred, but she more or less "partnered" with them to some degree. I pretty much think that happened here, and also, how plausible is it that a very gay guy and an older lady were schtupping or giving blow jobs, as this book indicates?  Jimmy himself said he loved her like his mother. 

Mostly this book is a whole lot of quotes as to how awful the D&D are. Probably what I think is the most well researched thing n here is all the quotes about how horrible they are. Just tons and tons of stories of them being bratty rich people, written down in people's diaries. Let's do a brief roundup of quotes!

• Alan "Tommy" Lascelles, who worked for him and hated every minute of it, said he didn't have a soul and no intellectual or artistic interests and had no friends.
• MP Robert Bernays: has a case of arrested development, hasn't thought through abdicating and hasn't realized that "abdication means exile and that for the rest of his life he can serve no useful purpose."
• When drunk, he'd imitate Winston Churchill trying to get him to not abdicate. 
• Both of them thought that handing out autographed pictures of themselves were a gift.
• The King refused to take his calls, can't blame him.
• Baba Metcalfe at the wedding, after musing as to how unattractive Wallis is in looks and speech, "I feel I am passing the weekend in an ugly chateau with people (with the exception of HRH) who are unattractive and completely ignorant of what is happening and who I never want to see again."
• Wallis: "Here was someone whose every day had been arranged for him all his life and now I was the one who was going to take the place of the entire British government, trying to think up things for him to do."
• Fruity Metcalfe, the Duke's best man and supposed best friend: "He might do anything--anything except the right thing. I live from hour to hour fearing to hear the worst." He worked for the Duke without pay and one day he's calling in for work and finds out that the Duke has bugged off to Biarritz without a word, left behind. "He has taken all cars and left not even a bicycle!...After twenty years I am through--utterly I despise him, I've fought and backed him up (knowing what a swine he was for 20 years), but now it is finished...The man is not worth doing anything for." 
• Wallis claimed to only be interested in buying presents for the children of Nassau. LOL, nope, shopping for herself. 
• Patrick Skene Catling ran into him while the duke was drunk and golfing. "I thought he was an awful shit and a fool." 
• The duke didn't have interest in much other than golfing, gardening, music/entertainment, and running his mouth. A lot. Apparently not saying much of interest, either. 
• Apparently Wallis claimed a bunch of her jewelry was stolen, then it turned up in the Sotheby's catalog. "She clearly could never wear the jewels again after she and her husband had collected the insurance." 
• The duke, lifelong party animal: "I never take life easy. I never have and I never shall." 
• Naturally they didn't write their own memoirs. It sounds like it was pulling teeth to get anything out of them about it. Naturally the duke claims he was slaving away at it and did it all himself. The duchess went through several authors quitting on her, one of them grumbling that he couldn't turn her into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and that she lied a LOT.
• Noel Coward: "Poor dear, what a monumental ass he has always been!" 

So how do I rate this book? Hell if I know. I guess I'm gonna split the difference and go with 3.5 stars. It was a complete lulu to read, honestly. 

Note: this review feels similarly.

Forty Ways to Look at JFK

By Gretchen Rubin.

I'm on to JFK in my presidential reading list. I really should have started with a shorter one or a more straightforward biographical one, but this one looked interesting, and indeed it was, I've bookmarked way too many things while reading it. Per the title, it's 40 different (well, sorta?) perspectives on JFK, who sounds like the most "mixed bag" of all mixed bag presidents. Or perhaps we just label him MAN OF CONTRADICTIONS and be done with it?

Some chapters are factual lists of things like achievements or medical details, others are switching back and forth between stuff like "JFK was all in for civil rights!" and then goes to "JFK didn't give a shit about civil rights!" or  "JFK was a natural charmer" vs. "JFK was totally posing," it's all going on like that. It seems to boil down to "he had his good points and his bad points, overall he's probably over ranked for what he should be, but he was charming AF IRL, so there you go." 

Notable things:

• Kennedy gave the impression of doing things easily and well and being himself with no apologies. He made looking like an egghead fun. No one minded that he was rich as long as he wasn't super obvious about it.
• He didn't like his voice, and "spent thirty minutes every morning  barking like a dog to deepen his voice" on advice of a vocal coach. I'm pretty sure the ones I've seen might object to this?
• First time he voted in a local primary: age 29, when he was on the ballot.
• He failed out of physical exams to get into the military but his dad got some doctors to fudge things. 
• "Dad told all the boys to get laid as often as possible." 
• Jackie: "People have told me 99 things that I had to do as First Lady, and I haven't done one of them." She had Lady Bird do her duties over 50 times in her first year and faked sick a lot. Sounds like she only wanted to show up for cultural/entertainment events.  She did, however, love to decorate and shop and spent sooooo much money.
• JFK: "I only got married because I was 37 years old and if I wasn't married and in politics, people would think I was queer."
• JFK generally kept things generic and optimistic without being specific about his goals. People saw what they wanted to see. 
• JFK DID do secret taping in the Oval Office, ahem. Like 600 times. 
• JFK campaigned to get voted "most likely to succeed" at Choate. Mmm-hmm.
• How fast did Kennedy read? Yeah, there's multiple answers to that, all of which are probably made up.
• What made Kennedy Kennedy? He was interesting and people were interested in the drama around him. 
• People were so into Kennedy news that they'd follow the escape of the kids' hamsters. Somehow all the shit he did--the cheating, etc. only made him more interesting. 
• Famous last words: "I'm 43 years old, and I'm the healthiest" (TOTAL LIES) "candidate for President in the United States...I'm not going to die in office. So the Vice Presidency doesn't mean anything."
• Roger Hillsman on certain people making up the whole Camelot thing: "If Jack Kennedy had heard that stuff about Camelot, he would have vomited." 
• There's a chapter arguing that JFK was all for civil rights, and a chapter arguing that he didn't give a shit about it. 
• His best friend, Lem Billings, repeated a year of school to follow JFK around and quit his job to follow JFK around, and claims JFK was the reason he never got married. 
• Rita Dallas, nurse: "All I could really think of was what in heaven's name does one say to a naked President...So I took a washcloth off the rack, tossed it in the tub, and said, 'For heaven's sake, cover up.' He splashed the water with his hands like a gleeful boy, then...made a fair attempt to cover up by ceremoniously draping the cloth over himself." 
• JFK didn't even try to stop being a constant poonhound. Oy.
• He lied constantly: about his health, his intellectualness, being a poonhound, blah de blah. 
• LBJ was all, he had a good sense of humor and he looked awfully good on the goddamned television and he was a pretty decent fellow, but also she was sickly and never did anything and somehow looked like a leader.
• In the end, the author says he...looked great. Just being him somehow made him great.

Well, it's an interesting bunch of takes to read, I'll say. Four stars.