The "biographies" of the sons and grandsons of Joseph P Kennedy. Not very good at all. I wound up skimming a lot of it. Not entertaining. Skipped around among all the Kennedy cousins. Photos focused on John F Kennedy Jr. ( )

I have found books on the Kennedy's endlessly fascinating . More had probably been written on them then any other American family. Laurence Leamer's lengthy tome on the fate of the son's of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy is no less entertaining and a balanced and fair look into to lives of these men. The Kennedy dynasty and its generations is based on the will of that patriarch along with the mythology and media worship that has kept it clearly in the spotlight for so many years. Joe, who created the fortune through what we would today label as white collar crime drove his sons with the blind ambition toward his ultimate goal of political conquest. Jack of ultimately reached that pinnacle and would be the only one to do so. The book looks into the lives, accomplishments, and failures of the these sons and grandsons. The darker side of alcohol, drugs, and womanizing is a big part of the story as are some of the successes in causes such as the Special Olympics. What could have been and what might have been did not quite play out as fate along with a fair measure of risky behavior ultimately decided things. ( )