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 enlarge | Author: Thurston Clarke
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.08
You Save: $10.92 (44%)
New (42) Used (14) Collectible (1) from $7.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 1838
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
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081011210443T
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Last Campaign July 11, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Enjoyed this a lot, gave me a great insight to a side of RFK I'd never known about. So much so that I had some problems that he really behaved as portrayed during this campaign. Very hard to imagine him crying openly at the sight of poor children and spontaneously going over and hugging some of them. But on the other hand, having 9 or 10 of his own,guess that side of him could come to the surface. Guess the residue of all the tough portrayals of him as Attorney General linger on. If all of this is true and accurate, makes me enormously sad that he didn't live to become President as it certainly seemed that's where he was definitely headed.
 Important for America's youth July 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"The Last Campaign" by Thurston Clarke is the excellenly-written story of Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. While many older Americans--including Tom Brokaw, who's praise can be found on the book's back cover--have called Clarke's study of Kennedy's campaign the first book to truly 'bring them back' to 1968, I think that Clarke's book is more important for younger readers. As a college student myself, I knew nothing of the chaos of the 1960s except what I had learned in a classroom and seen in movies and on poorly-produced television shows. In my previous encounters with media dealing with the 1960s, no document ever made me feel anything about the subject except fascination, until I read Clarke's book. Clarke's writing about RFK's '68 campaign evokes in its readers all of the emotions--excitement, fear, joy, anger, sadness--that the 1960s produced in those Americans who lived through them. In the end, Clarke's story is a description of an ideal political candidate, one who said what needed to be said even when it wasn't prescient, and who treated every American as his brother. That is ultimately something that America's youth need to experience, not so that they know the way things were in the 1960s, but so that they can understand what is possible today.
Makes RFK's Loss Sting Even More July 8, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Unlike most Kennedy books which show the faults of the brothers and the family at large, this excellent book shows a man who campaigned for president in manner unheard of before and unlikely to be done again. Although Bobby Kennedy is known for hanging out with the glamour crowd, he spent he took his quest to the inner-city ghetto, the Indian reservations and the mining towns. He confronted the well-off and challenged colllege students. He formed an unlikely colition of angry white workers and black millitants. He went into the ghettos of Indianapolis on the night of the King assasination and may have prevented a dangerous riot. If he would have gotten the Democratic nod for president, he quite possibly (unless the Nixon camp could launch a successful smear campaign against him) could have become our greatest president. Hats off to Thurston Clarke!
What Might Have Been July 7, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Robert F. Kennedy was often seen as an aggressive, abusive, arrogant man--and there were times he certainly was. But his brother's assassination seemed to soften him, giving him an insight into suffering which the author compares to Abraham Lincoln's. Kennedy could empathize with the suffering of others.
This led him, during his campaign for the presidency in 1968, to seek out those who suffered and to promise to help. A large part of RFK's greatness is that he was sincere. He meant what he said, and there is every reason to believe he would have tried to keep these promises. Of course, we'll never know how well he might have done--or if he would have been a great president. That's part of his greatness, too.
Minorities, the poor of all races, and the young were all drawn to his message of hope. People were crazy about him. Many of those around him compared his celebrity to that of the Beatles. Crowds would tear at him and his clothes and leave him covered with scratches. Yet Kennedy loved being out there among them. In the back of his mind, though, he knew that eventually, someone would try to kill him.
Thurston Clarke's book is eloquently written, highly insightful, and hard to put down. It should be required reading for Barack Obama and John McCain and anyone else who runs for the presidency. They would learn a thing or two about honesty, sincerity, and compassion.
"For all the words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been.'"
John Greenleaf Whittier
Superb History July 7, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Probably many Americans still play the "What if ... " game when it comes to historical events. What if the Mayflower blew off course and went too far south? What if Roosevelt was defeated in 1940? What if Martin Luther King survived his assassination attempt? What if Bobby did? Probably one of the most haunting "what if's" our country could ever have would be the last one, and Thurston Clarke's examination of the too-short presidential campaign of 1968 is a "what iffers" dream.
Being a fan of RFK, I must admit to how much I didn't know about his presidential campaign prior to reading this book. It's a thorough, complete recounting of the 82 days, from his announcement to his killing, of the events on the trail. The book takes us through the Indiana primary, where RFK defied conventions and campaigned the way he wanted to. We go with him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where he befriends a boy that stays by his side during the entire day he's there. Oregon fails to roll out a welcome mat, while California has a red carpet for him. We see him in tough audiences, and in mobs where people can't wait to touch him. Bobby was many things to many people.
By covering his schedule, we also come to terms with the man who was Bobby Kennedy as well. Throughout the book, Clarke allows us insights into his persona and character, through conversations with people who knew him, and extensive quoting by the candidate himself. RFK clearly had many different sides, but the one I shall always remember is reading about RFK meeting children in abject poverty, and cradling their diseased and dying bodies in tears.
Clarke's book starts out with a recounting, in a prologue, about the train ride that took RFK's body back to Washington for burial. This probably was one of the best prologues I had ever read in any book. It was so moving and eloquently written that I actually read it twice. It sets up the book perfectly, as he describes the countless people who came out to stand along the train ride back, honoring the man who died trying to make our country better. It's a moving tribute to him that I shall never forget.
So, we play the "what if" game. Would our country have been better off with RFK in the White House? What would have happened, and what wouldn't have happened, with our political system? No one knows. We can only ponder. After reading this book, it only makes me wonder even more.
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