The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

A Multiple Choice Quiz. Choose One:

Joseph P. Kennedy was a

1. Helicopter parent
2. Movie mogul
3. Banker
4. Stanch Catholic
5. First chairman of the SEC
6. First Irish American ambassador to the Court of St. James
7. Habitual womanizer
8. Father of a U.S.  president, U.S. Attorney General, and U.S. Senator
9. Liquor importer
10. Owner of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago
11. All the above

Surprise! All the above is the correct answer.

David Nasaw’s engrossing biography is aptly subtitled, in true Horatio Alger style, The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.  Kennedynot only lived in interesting times, but for a Catholic boy from the wrong side of Boston, he made himself at home on Wall Street, in Hollywood, Vatican Rome and of course Washington.

Nasaw, author of a biography of another grandiose gentleman, William Randolph Hearst, has written a compulsively readable, fair-minded account of an ambitious, controversial man.