Acclaimed biographer Neal Gabler discusses his new book, which he worked on while at the Starr Center with a Patrick Henry History Fellowship. Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour is gripping as both human drama and political history.

About the book (from publisher Penguin Random House): Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father’s fortune and his brothers’ coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom saw—a man both racked by and driven by insecurity, a man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed. In this sweeping biography, Gabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America.

"There’s plenty of drama and pathos, including a riveting recreation of physical attacks on Kennedy by mobs of Boston anti-busing protesters, but Gabler pierces the haze of glamour surrounding the Kennedy clan to get at the substance of the politics they personified," said Publisher's Weekly. 

View on March 4 at 5 p.m. on Facebook LIVE @ Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. 

 

 
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