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| Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History | 
 enlarge | Author: Ted Sorensen
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy Used: $6.50
You Save: $21.45 (77%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 18062
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6.2 x 1.8
ISBN: 0060798718
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.922092
EAN: 9780060798710
ASIN: 0060798718
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history. Sorensen returns to January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage. Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitions—from a failed bid for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 to the successful presidential campaign in 1960, after which he was named Special Counsel to the President. Sorensen describes in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK during some of the most crucial days of his presidency, from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies. Illuminating, revelatory, and utterly compelling, Counselor is the brilliant, long-awaited memoir from the remarkable man who shaped the presidency and the legacy of one of the greatest leaders America has ever known.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
The Keeper of the Kennedy Flame November 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ted Sorensen, who was as much a Kennedy alter ego as he was a speechwriter, is the keeper of the Kennedy flame. In that capacity he wrote Kennedy's biography in 1965. But that book was wooden and lacking in perspective. This book is written after Sorensen has lived a full lifetime and enjoys the perspective of history. He's somewhat more capable of being critical of Kennedy than he was in 1965, but he's still a Kennedy booster. And this time around, he is armed with the vindication brought by 40 years of history. Best of all, Sorensen is capable, at this stage of his life, in being extraordinarily candid. The result is quite moving.
Sorensen's own life history -- his idealistic politician father, his mentally ill mother, and his large extended family -- is quite interesting in its own right. And he tells the tale with great grace.
Sorensen's relationship with Kennedy, and absolute devotion to the man, is told with great insight and passion. Sorensen's best service to history is to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kennedy was a man of great substance and idealism. This is not some empty suit, some diletante repeating lines fed to him by advisors hired by his rich daddy. This criticism of Kennedy has resonated over the years given the plethora of shallow Kennedy want-to-bes and given all the disclosures about Kennedy's poor health and border-line addictive sex life. Apart from appealing to our prurient interests, such criticisms appeal to our baser instincts that delight in dragging down the good and the mighty.
Sorensen portrays Kennedy's intelligence, wit, and judgment. Most importantly, Kennedy was a leader with the ability to inspire and to get the most out of people. This included Sorensen himself, who under Kennedy's spell wrote some of the best speeches of the century and who helped to run a successful presidential campaign and administration. Without Kennedy, Sorensen is lost, at least in his abortive attempts at a post-Kennedy political career. He's a highly intelligent, successful lawyer without Kennedy, but with Kennedy he's able to scale far greater heights.
But there is also something quite tragic about Sorensen's absolute devotion to Kennedy, which, he acknowledges, cost him his family. Sorensen's grief over Kennedy's death is conveyed in very moving terms.
On the matter of Kennedy' speeches and publications, Sorensen takes the position that Kennedy is the author in the truest sense of the word, though Sorensen (much like a highly effective judical law clerk) is writing much of the text. Sorensen stresses his partnership with Kennedy, how he was in tune with Kennedy on policy matters, and how he would borrow from Kennedy's previous speeches or conversations to write first drafts that were then edited heavily by Kennedy. What matters for me is not so much that Kennedy, like Lincoln, had to write every word of his speech, but that Kennedy was highly engaged in policy formulation, policy expression, and speech writing. It's unrealistic in the modern age to expect a President to have the time to write every word of every speech. Kennedy used his time well so that he could perform all of the functions of his office and had the indispensable abiity to inspire and to delegate to others.
Sorensen delivers a withering evaluation of George W. Bush and the wrong turn the country took in the Reagan era. Kennedy stood for the importance of the public sector, for shared sacrifice, and for creation of an economically just society. The worship of the private sector, the view of government as a problem not a solution, and the pursuit of social wedge issues have made Kennedy obsolete for many years. History has seemed to vindicate Kennedy as we view the wreckage of the American economy and foreign policy in 2008 -- and as we see the emergence of a new President who Sorensen views as Kennedy's rightful heir.
Whatever your politics, Sorensen has written a moving and insightful autobiography that makes the best case for Kennedy that can be made.
Time well spent September 20, 2008
Counselor was very much what I expected., having heard a radio interview between Bob Edwards and the erudite Mr. Sorenson. Bordering on hero worship but honest and informative, this book confirmed what I always felt about JFK, that he was one of a kind and American politics has not and possibly may not see his ilk again.
 Ted Sorensen's 2008 Convention Speech September 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ted Sorensen's 2008 Convention Speech
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 03:20 PM
"In my more than 50 years of national conventions, this is one of the most important. Our 8 year national nightmare of mendacity, mediocrity and economic misery--with millions of Americans losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their hopes--will soon end with the election of Barack Obama.
I have long dreamed that our party would produce another president matching John F. Kennedy's intellect and integrity, his capacity to inspire justice at home and peace around the world--and this week my dream is coming true. Once in a lifetime, said the poet, hope and history meet in one extraordinary man and movement--I thank the good Lord that I've lived long enough to meet and help such men twice in my lifetime, John Kennedy and Barack Obama.
Kennedy at 43 proved that age matters in the White House. His energy, appeal to other young world leaders, calm under pressure and openness to new thinking, well served our nation. Denounced as a candidate for lacking executive experience, he displayed sound judgment in leading a successful nationwide campaign, choosing a top-notch team, negotiating with difficult leaders, and out-organizing and out-th inking his adversaries--just as he would as president, particularly when, with prudence and courage, he induced the Soviets to withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba without the U.S. firing a shot; and the world gave thanks that the more experienced Richard Nixon had lost that close election.
In 1960, Kennedy, like Obama today, facing a Republican tied to a failed past, looked to a future of new ideas and opportunities. As president, he did not send the Marine Corps to preserve America's oil supplies, he sent the Peace Corps to preserve America's global standing. Confronting a Soviet military advantage in space, he made all Americans proud by literally reaching for the moon.
Today, we need new leadership. We have lost our way, lost the respect of our allies, lost the confidence of our investors and consumers. Are we to be the first generation of Americans to leave to our children a country in worse condition than we received it?
In short: this year, my friends, the fates will try us; erase all trace of fear and bias; we have the man we need at last to embrace the future, not the past, and to dispel eight years of pain and shame. Barack Obama is his name! Call the roll!"
 Sorenson audio-book review August 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A fascinating look at a fascinating time from a unique perspective, Ted Sorenson. Sorenson's own words & voice inflections are preserved for future generations. Anyone interested in the Kennedy Presidential era should add this to their collection. A must!
Sorensen, before, during and after JFK August 28, 2008
Should fairly obscure and relatively little known people write autobiographies? Answers to this question will vary, of course, but if the person's name is Theodore C. Sorensen, my answer would be 'definitely'. Indeed, Sorensen is one of several persons I identified several years ago in a category I labelled "I hope he writes and I can read his life story". [In case anyone is interested, the other two were/are musicians: Frederick Fennell (1914-2004) and Mitch Miller (1911- ).]
Ted Sorensen is one of those figures who essentially went from nowhere to become one of the closest aides to President John F. Kennedy. Readers of this memoir will be most interested in Sorensen's life between 1953 and Novemeber 22, 1963, during which he served as one of JFK's closest advisers ("Special Counsel" was his official title from 1961 to 1963) and his top speech writer.
There are many ideas a reviewer of this book could comment on. I will mention a few that especially interested me.
So, according to Sorensen, the following are accurate:
-- JFK was the person who conceived and was the main writer of his famous "Profiles in Courage" book, though he did receive lots of assistance from Sorensen.
--Kennedy "showed no courage" in avoiding voting on the censure of Senator Joe McCarthy during the 1950s.
--JFK did err (in accepting assurance of success from CIA leaders) in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but he recovered, learned from his experience, and was brilliant during the Cuban Missile Crisis, especially in triumphing over his hawkish associates.
--Kennedy took greater initiative in civil rights than any of the presidents before him.
--We really don't know what JFK would have done with respect to US involvement in Vietnam.
Here are a few additional revelations. Sorensen was responsible for the faux pas JFK made in his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in Berlin. The Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson really did not get along well, and JFK thought LBJ was just about useless as Vice President. There was much friction between Sorensen and JFK associates/advisers Ken O'Donnell and Richard Goodwin.
Regarding the JFK assassination, Sorensen was, along with many of JFK's close associates, too shocked and numbed by his death to give much thought to the question of who did it. But over the decades Sorensen has come around to accepting what most of the American people have believed: more persons than Lee Oswald were involved in this unsolved and unpunished crime.
The epilogue is extremely useful as a concise summary of Sorensen's view of JFK's strengths, weaknesses, triumphs, failures -- both personal and as a public figure. If one does not read all 530 pages of the book, at least read this epilogue.
I believe the book justified my hopes expressed in the first paragraph of this review. The writing is superb, for the most part candid, and full of humor. If the 1950s and and 1960s interest you at all, this is a book to investigate.
Tim Koerner
August 2008
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