Evan offers much insight into an unfinished life. He meets the mark of a good biographer; as a history this is a well-balanced read. But he fails to give us what we crave: perpective into how the world might have been different had Bobby survived.

Bobby once famously said: "Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies". Mr. Thomas has done a commendable job of tracking that change, speaking to the better known facets of Bobby's personal as well as political evolution. Evan's book captures the antecedents: his awkwardness as a young Kennedy; the shadow, and then death of, his brother Jack; the opportunities to question the rigidity of his Catholic faith; his decision to align himself with McCarthy (Joe not Gene). These alternately help set the foundation for the evolution of Bobby from FDR politician to modern-day progressive. These help explain what caused a 1950's era government attorney concerned about Comintern penetration of the State Department to become a proponent of the United Farmworkers in its most radical years. Or those changes that caused the one-time skeptic of Martin Luther King to become one of his most ardent political champions.

Evans provides the rationale for the enmity shared by various mobsters, LBJ, and even Roy Cohn. His rationale is this: Bobby cared. Evans touches us when he describes Bobby as a man who strived to live lives as others did. The description of Bobby's pain witnessing the utter poverty of rural blacks in the 1960's Mississippi delta is palpable and authentic. But Bobby was also a shrewd strategist, adapting to a time when the solid south was no longer the dependable, conservative counterweight of the Democratic Party fulcrum, and the campus was no longer the only forum in America for frank discussion of problems in America. Bobby was not an opportunist, but he was a political realist, and in the days leading up to the '68 convention Bobby reflected not simply the changes occurring within the antiwar movement or the modern-day Democratic Party, but also those changes occurring all across America at that time.

Would Bobby have turned around a country that was heading down a path of "secret plans" to end the Vietnam War, Watergate, "Trickle Down" economics and South American puppeteering? Evan Thomas to his credit wrote a book about an unfinished life, and a good one at that. But for those interested in what might have been, we'll have to continue to wonder.

The life and times of Robert Kennedy beg for a coherent and in depth book .... unfortunately this is not it. Living in the shadow of his presidential brother, the shadow of his oldest brother killed in WWII and the all encompassing shadow of his father, RFK was able to chisel out an identity of his own in US history before his tragic death. Hoping to gain some understanding/insight of/into this man's character and evolution from a sullen child to presidential candidate and everything in between, and a chonology of such things as his involvement in the US civil rights movement, McCarthyism (and RFK's involvement), Cuba (Bay of Pigs and The Missle Crisis) and his relationship in the White House with his brother JFK... I was greatly disappointed. A glaring hole in this book is any serious treatment of RFK and Vietnam. What the book does contain are snippets, quotes and anecdotes, some mildly interesting, (i.e. RFK's role in the release of Martin Luther King from prison), without any cohesiveness and very little context. And although many of the conclusions reached in this volume are valid they are simply not borne out here. The book's attempt to cover significant parallel events is at best confusing and there is also an alarming amount of armchair psychology. I hate to be so hard nosed but the subject deserves much better than this book.

Evan Thomas writes like who he is: a good reporter who realizes that what he's writing is history. He adds little sentimentality because he doesn't have to. He has framed his subject in an interesting way (Bobby's alienated childhood left him with empathy for underdogs and outsiders, as well as an outsized loyalty to the family's whose acceptance he craved) that just giving us the facts, just telling us the story, packs an emotional punch.

Knowing how this story ends makes everything about it more powerful. Again, Thomas isn't maudlin because he doesn't have to be. When the Kennedy Brothers are dealing with Dr. King, all three of them making compromises because they are confident that they have time to accomplish their individual agendas, you shake your head because of what was lost. As Bobby moves to the head of the family, finally getting the respect he craved his whole life, you are overwhelmed with sadness and dread.

Most of all, as you watch RFK change, learn and grow as a man and a politician and statesman, you ache for what we lost as a country. Today it seems that being completely intractable is viewed as a positive thing in our leaders. Bobby proved we have the capacity to evolve, to take our experiences and better ourselves. Imagine what a President like that could have accomplished!

This was a good read but it left me wanting to know more. Bobby Kennedy was an enigma but the book could have told me more about him. This book is definitely worth reading but it should only be the beginning of getting to know RFK.