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| The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America | 
 enlarge | Author: Thurston Clarke
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.93
You Save: $11.07 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 1601
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0805077928
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.922092
EAN: 9780805077926
ASIN: 0805077928
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081121221340T
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| Customer Reviews:
 The timeless question....."What if?" June 16, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
What if Robert F. Kennedy had lived to become President of the United States? It's a question that has lingered in the minds of millions of us for forty years and Thurston Clarke's terrific new book, "The Last Campaign", ends with those thoughts. By the time the reader has reached that point, a succinct and well-paced narrative has unfolded, reminding us of a time of hope and possibility. If we still marvel at the short, one thousand days of the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the eighty-two days of Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign seem all but suspended in time.
"The Last Campaign" follows a necessary timeline...Kennedy's entry into the race in mid-March, LBJ's withdrawal on March 31, the assassination of Martin Luther King a few days later and the intense primary season of May and early June. Clarke looks at the campaign from all angles and tells a remarkable story. Kennedy loved to be with children and Native Americans, preferred large, boisterous crowds to small ones and disliked speaking to university audiences. His ruthless reputation, earned from his days working with Joseph McCarthy and later as Attorney General, softened in the spring of 1968, as if he had finally been released to be himself. Indeed, Clarke points out that the most exhilarating times of the campaign were at the beginning and right at the end.
The author is careful to include much of the relevant political scene that spring. Eugene McCarthy, who had the support of the young idealists and who was a man RFK loathed, was his chief rival, but Hubert Humphrey loomed large and had the support of the party establishment. But it was the New York senator, (with the help of the "honorary" Kennedys... those linked to RFK through marriage and politics) who put a personal stamp on the issues of the day and who had the engaging touch reflected in his primary wins in Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and California.
It is noted in the book that many of today's campaign issues are not all that different from 1968...an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president and race relations, to name just two. Speculation will always be the order of the day when it comes to thinking about what a Robert F. Kennedy presidency might have been like, but Thurston Clarke has laid down the groundwork for what that might have been, and in doing so, has given us a lasting tribute to Robert F. Kennedy and his final political endeavor.
 Worth reading, but of mixed value June 13, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
75% of this book was superb. The author brought the reader close to the action, very successfully, the action of the incessant whirl and confusion of the campaign. The candidate's role and that of his advisors. Where the campaign "fits into history," so to speak. Where the book is irritating is in the first 15-20%, where it appears that the author is writing a brief for RFK's sainthood, and in the last 5% or so, where he returns to that message. If he had left off those parts, I would have gladly nominated the work for the Pulitzer Prize in biography.
So I recommend the book very highly for that middle 75%, and advise the reader to move through the slavishly admiring part at the beginning. The author can be forgiven for loving Bobby.
The best RFK book EVER June 12, 2008
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
When I first heard there was going to be another RFK book about his final days campaigning towards the Democratic nomination-- and as much as I am an RFK fan-- I was still rather "ho hum" about the prospects of learning anything new. Five pages into Thurston Clarkes' latest book, The Last Campaign, I was hooked, spell bounded and most of all educated like never before. Clarke paints a new portrait of RFK, one that ties the words from his speeches and uses those words to help the reader gain detailed insight into the person RFK was becoming; as a leader, as a politician, as a father and most of all as a man. The ever changing Bobby is the one of many reasons he is dearest in my heart along with his ability to always improve his knowledge, for always asking the question, "what is the right thing to do", and his ability to display and share his pain.
Clarke shows us a man raised in tremendous wealth can care about the common man, can care about the farmer, can care about the poor and impoverish, can care about our educational standards, can care about hunger in America, can care about doing what is correct AND not always what is politically correct and can care with sincere compassion and grace.
RFK's legacy is left for all us to share, to embrace and keep alive. He would not want us asking the question "what would happen had he lived?" He would want us to carry the torch of his ideas, his values, his moral courage, his search for knowledge, his compassion and his grace. This book showed me that there is a piece of RFK in all of us.
Clarke's book combines my two favorite passions: the very well written word and RFK. It's the best book ever of RFK.
Today's Corporate Democrats Do Not Want You to Read This! June 8, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Unscripted before it became a look that politicians tried for. Thats the feeling of RFK one gets from reading this book. It is VERY interesting to read this from today's identity politics standpoint. The author points out that RFK took some heat from middle class radicals for seeming at times to pay heed to the law and order counterforce that was sweeping the land after the violence of the 67' 68. RFK's response is quite interesting. The author quotes him to the effect of "McCarthy can be Mr. Pure, because he's never done anything for Civil Rights. I've got to show working class whites that I can be for them too" (not a direct quote)
The book is fascinating. It can be read as a spontaneous effort to keep the class cement of the the New Deal
Coalition fresh, even as race and right wing demagogues and media were set to blow the house down. Yet, ironically RFK does not come accross as a preserver, but a creator. He seems spontantous, and unpredicatale the way he told audiences what they didn't want to hear but also gave a sense of what was possible if they heard it. Weirdly, they were thrown off by the RFK's honesty, because it was an honesty about inequality almost never heard from a person whose voice was allowed on national media, the real electorate.
Want to know how a poltician can have the highest ever low income African American Support and also win Very White Indiana on the C-Word, Class? Read this book. Today's Corporate Democrats don't want THAT oil and water to ever mix again! Mixing that is what got him killed as the excellent new book by Shane O'Sullivan shows yet again. Be sure to also read Who Killed BobbyWho Killed Bobby?: The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy
"What if" -- The question still haunts us today June 25, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I was born in 1970 so don't have first hand perspective of the 60s or RFKs presidential campaign. However, I've always been fascinated by the decade, one of the most tumultuous, calamitous and important decades in our country's history. While many figures loom large over the 60s, one can make the case that the two figures who loom largest over that decade are MLK and RFK. They carried the hope and promise that JFK ushered in with his presidency until the latter part of the decade and their assassinations slammed shut that optimism a mere two months apart.
Clarke does a masterful job capturing the gestalt of the time pitch perfectly and the impact of RFKs presidential campaign through the course of those 82 days. To start, one must realize the difference in presidential elections today vs. this time period. The primaries were not nearly as important as they are today. The political machine still dominated the party selection process and Kennedy faced near insurmountable challenges as he entered the race from the Democratic party establishment. He recognized that he had to basically hit a home run in the remaining primaries to convince delegates to turn their support to him because of popular support of Democratic votes. May of the establishment viewed him as "ruthless" and "opportunistic" and we see how this was reinforced after McCarthy's surprise showing in New Hampshire and Kennedy's decision to jump in the race soon after that. I found Clarke's account of Kennedy's announcement and first speech at Kansas State moving. Today, politicians stump speeches are carefully crafted, crowds controlled to ensure no hostile questions and control so tight to prevent any extemporaneous occurrence that might spread like wildfire across the internet. Kansas State was not that environment and Kennedy demonstrated the traits and attributes during that night that would make his improbable run to the Presidency become an almost certain nomination as he won the California primary (and started to convince the party machine that he should be the Democratic nominee).
Clarke captures all the inherent contradictions of RFK -- his strengths, weaknesses -- and one gets a close personal "ride" through the whirlwind campaign trail. We see an RFK haunted by JFK's assassination and the realization that the same fate might befall him. (Clarke shares moments of balloons popping or other similar situations that caused RFK to recoil as if a gun was shot) We witness Kennedy's disdain for public speaking, comfort with the poor and under-privileged, moral conviction about race and poverty as central campaign themes, in spite of the advice of his advisers. We relive his campaign and amazing victory in Indiana - including the night of April 4th in Indianapolis when he stood in front of an African-American crowd in the inner city (a place the police refused to go to provide him protection that night) and probably was as big a reason Indianapolis was spared the riots that broke out across almost all other major American cities.
I wish this book didn't end - then again, that is much similar to the legacy that RFK left and especially his presidential campaign. We are left wondering what if to many questions - knowing that if RFK had lived, certainly the course of the following months of 1968 would have been different, maybe even the next four or eight years. Hope and optimism would give way to despair and disillusionment - more violence and death in Southeast Asia and at Kent State, Watergate - and we are forced to relive those 82 days and only imagine "What if".
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