A Thousand Days, in so many words :: Essays Papers

A deoxyguanosine monophosphate Days, in so many words Any writer presented with the scare away task of chronicling such an emotional figure as John F. Kennedy, trance being personally and professionally involved in his administration is resile to either fail miserably or succeed brilliantly. Schlesinger seems to have through both. While setting out to impart the happenings, demeanors, exchanges, and truths regarding the period Kennedy was in office, Schlesinger alternates amidst objective analysis and outright apology (Document, 55). This lends the books strain to report and editorialize the events of Kennedys administration through personal observations to induce overly sympathetic and occasionally lends a sense of personal purgation to the work. In fact, Schlesinger himself notes as such in the opening pages This work is not a comprehensive history of the Kennedy presidency. It is a memoir by hotshot who served in the White Ho engage during the Kennedy year (ix). However, in the opinion of Graber this was seen as one of the best analyses of the Kennedy White House of the 90 or so which came out after the assassination in Dallas (1). This fact that the author was an built-in piece of the events he is recording allows for much direct quotation of the overthrow and those around him. Likewise he depends upon memory, interviews, or conjecture to complete or so dialogue or moments where he was not present. While not unique in the research of a chronicle, several critics found that this inability of Schlesinger to strike himself from his subject leads to a tendency to magnify his own reference in the shaping of policies and the making of decisions (Graber, 55). However, this is not to say that the author does not use primary examples of the presidents statements to support his account. In dealing with the Berlin derangement Kruschev was causing the administration, Kennedy is quoted as saying, I think we need to smile less(prenomin al) and be tougher lending credibility to the remainder of the account and Kennedys role in it (406). This use of direct quotes lends an air of presence to the text that talent otherwise be lacking as well as allowing a more solid character reference to be built in the mind of the reader, and for that the book gains strength.