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 enlarge | Author: Thurston Clarke
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.81
You Save: $10.19 (41%)
New (47) Used (16) Collectible (1) from $14.03
Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 2993
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 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: V20081114045735S
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| Customer Reviews:
 What politics should be about July 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
One of the best campaign books I have ever read. As he did in "Ask Not," Thurston Clark brings out the back-story of a great moment in history. In this case, RFK's decision to run for president, despite his many misgivings about doing so. It chronicles his determination to run the way he wanted to - not the ways the polls and pols told him to run. Ultimately, though, "The Last Campaign" shows us what a real leader looks like and ought to behave. With his characteristic bluntness, RFK didn't shirk from reminding people that in a democracy, everyone is responsible for the country's actions. One cannot blame Washington for their problems without holding themselves just as accountable. Sadly, as Clark cites in the book, no politician from any party could get away with such an attitude today.
A great book about a great man.
 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
4 out of 4 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
4 out of 4 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
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