David Nasaw
David Nasaw's new book is The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.
From the author's Q & A with Randy Dotinga at The Christian Science Monitor:
Q: What drew to you to the story of this man whose children include a president, an attorney general, an ambassador and one of the most storied senators of all time?See Nasaw's five best books about the Kennedys.
The family asked me to do it.
I met with Senator Ted Kennedy to talk it over. We met in the Senate office building, and we had lunch with his two Portuguese water dogs, who came to the Senate on Mondays.
I spent a good long time trying to convince the senator I shouldn't write the book. I'm a crazy obsessive researcher, and I was bound to turn up something that wouldn't make the family happy. And I said it wasn't unlikely that by the time it ran, some Kennedy would be running for office.
He said all the bad stuff is out there, like Gloria Swanson [with whom Joseph Kennedy had an affair]. Everybody knows the dirt, but if a historian writes this book, he is going to come up with a much more credible portrait of his father than what's out there.
My conditions were firm, and I said, I'm not going to budge. I want full access to everything, including all the papers that are closed to researchers and stored at the Kennedy library. You and your family and your lawyers...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: David Nasaw's Andrew Carnegie.
--Marshal Zeringue
