>>http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/the-peculiar-life-joseph-kennedy-7630
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>>Thought it might interest you - I believe you're a student of that era.
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>Very interesting, and I am tempted to read Nasaw's book if only to see the details of "Nasaw also disposes of the malicious canard that Kennedy was a bootlegger during Prohibition. But like many others, Kennedy foresaw the end of the Prohibition folly, which effectively delivered one of the country’s greatest industries into the hands of organized crime. He secured large stocks of premium Scotch and exclusive importing arrangements, founded Somerset Importers and collected huge profits." It is my understanding that in partnership with Frank Costello and Zwingy Longman a good deal of that "importing" from Canada took place before 1933 <g>
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>There is also the question of the treatment of the daughter's lobotomy. I have not seen any explanation of that sympathetic to Joe Kennedy so that would be interesting. His analysis of the financial acumen and his appointment as ambassador as one of the worst in diplomatic history certainly seem spot-on.
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>It is interesting that he says the 1960 election's "irregularities" are glossed over when it is a a subject on which most historians have now reached consensus - even if there is still some question about just how much money was in the suitcase Skinny d'Amato delivered in Charleston to steal the West Virginia primary from Humphrey or how many of the walking dead in Illinois walked into the polls in Cook County.
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>On the whole, the picture seems remarkably to be the one that would be most palatable to the later generation Kennedys - i.e. the firewall that the sins of the father ended with the father and that the 1960 election was not tainted with original sin.
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>It also snips any thread that the election of 1960 or the events of 1963 were in any way connected to events prior to 1933.
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>I got the same feeling when the great film-maker and puerile historian Oliver Stone made JFK - indicting the CIA and military industrial complex on the strength of the story of Jim Garrison - a judge in the pocket of Carlos Marcello who had famously asked "who will remove this stone from my shoe?"

Interestingly, the Wikipedia articles for Garrison and Marcello do not mention each other.