The Kennedy's Americas Emerald Kings

Location: Ireland

Regardless of your opinion or none of the Kennedys this is a fascinating insight to one of the most famous Irish American families.

Irish Books Reviews: Summary The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings: Another Side of This Family
Comment: Professor Maier has documented a side of the Kennedys that many readers are quite unfamiliar with: their ongoing commitment to their religious heritage. As Maier writes, Americans are more comfortable with Kennedy's as power operators and libertines. The essential Catholic nature of these men and women, however, either bores us or makes us uncomfortable. Some liberals don't appreciate the Kennedys as Catholics because they dislike Catholicism itself. Many conservatives deny that the Kennedy's are Catholic because, for such critics, morality means sexual prudery. Maier is able to strike the proper balance in portraying Joseph, Sr., John F. Kennedy and Edward as committed, believing albeit flawed Catholics. Robert is correctly drawn as the most conventionally devout of the Kennedy males. This should not be a revelation to readers, but in a sense, it is. And the author makes one more very important and routinely ignored point: It is very significant that Americans have been unwilling to nominate (let alone elect) a Roman Catholic to the Presidency since John F. Kennedy, over 40 years ago. This work ranks as one of the best, most carefully-documented and readable of the hundreds of books published about this family.

Kennedys Irish Americans Emerald Kings

Summary The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings: Entertaining, Informative and Not a Rehash
Comment: While this is an excellent history of the Kennedy family, tracing its roots like few histories have done, this book is far more. The author neither shows a bias to adore this large, well-known clan nor does he show a disdain for them. He simply tells the story as it is and leaves the reader to his own conclusions.

The main thrust of the book is the family's dealings with the Catholic church. We learn what many have suspected, that the Kennedy family paid off the churches leaders, providing them with much personal and institutional wealth, for the benefit of various Kennedy family members --- for special treatment and services.

The book covers just about all family members who were helped by the Catholic hierarchy but, of course, it spends more time on JFK who benefited from payments made by his father on his behalf. But it goes on to the more recent affairs including marriage annulments of lesser family members.

While this clan is of much less importance than it once was --- indeed it is of little importance --- this history and the new revelations add a good deal of knowledge for the student of politics and religion and leaves us with a distaste and distrust of both.

Susanna K. Hutcheson
Summary The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings: very interesting!
Comment: this new kennedy's book is very great.
there are a lot of picture and the texts are very complete.
you can learn a lot about the kennedys.
it's never boring.
So read it!
Includes several never-before-seen private photos from the Kennedy Family Collection that are being published for the first time.

The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings By Thomas Maier.

"The Irish Catholic influences on John F. Kennedy and other Kennedys, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, are explored in Thomas Maier's 700-page history. This books recalls Kennedy connections with the Vatican leading up to 1960 election, JFK trip to Ireland; also Robert Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy, Rose Kennedy and Edward "Ted" Kennedy and the influence of Roman Catholic church, Irish politics and immigrant background on this family, which book suggests was more powerful influence than Camelot myth. This book details for the first time Jacqueline Kennedy's private grief after the 1963 JFK assassaination that included talk of suicide in conversations with Jesuit priest Richard McSorley. In a later chapter, this history also recounts the efforts of the Kennedys in the 1998 the north of Ireland peace accords. "

This is a long video (need broadband) that talks about the book and has some interesting images of JFK in Ireland.

Regardless of how folks Irish (or otherwise) in America may feel about JFK, in Ireland itself, The Kennedys and in particular John Fitzgerald Kennedy would be seen as a very positive Irishman and one Irish are proud of, because he defied the system.

Kennedys Irish Americans Emerald Kings

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The Kennedy's Americas Emerald Kings