Author Chris Matthews firmly sets America’s first Roman Catholic president in the context of his family. Matthews, the host of “Hardball” on MSNBC, makes no secret of his admiration for Kennedy, but does not shy away from pointing out his shortcomings.

    Matthews, who has a deep knowledge of American political history, draws on conversations* with many people, including his old boss (and onetime speaker of the House) Tip O’Neill and some of Kennedy’s former aides*.

    Matthews emphasizes the shadow cast by Joseph P. Kennedy, the father who drove his sons relentlessly*. As Roosevelt’s ambassador to Britain in the late 1930s, he was a stalwart* apologist for the Nazi regime and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement*.

    John Kennedy, who had “devoured” Winston Churchill’s works as a teenager, sought to model himself on Churchill.

    Kennedy’s love for Churchillian positions made him different from many Congressional Democrats in the postwar era.

    By the late 1950s, however, he had begun to woo* liberals in preparation for a presidential run. Matthews further suggests that the Bay of Pigs episode, which President Kennedy refused to escalate* by sending in American forces, and the Cuban missile crisis, which he safely negotiated to a close, impressed on him the importance of averting a nuclear war. (SD-Agencies)