A short life of the author
Robert Francis Kennedy (20 November 1925 – 6 June 1968) was an American politician, attorney, and author who served as the sixty-fourth United States Attorney General (1961–1964) under his brother President John F. Kennedy and as a U.S. Senator from New York (1965–1968). He was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in June 1968. His books — written during and between the defining political crises of the 1960s — are unusually substantive political works that reflect a mind engaged with the moral dimensions of power in ways that most political memoirs do not attempt.
Life and Career
RFK was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. He attended Milton Academy and Harvard, served in the Navy during World War II, and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. He managed his brother John’s 1952 Senate campaign and his 1960 presidential campaign with a fierce, organisational intensity that earned him a reputation as the tough Kennedy — the ruthless enforcer to JFK’s graceful public persona.
As Attorney General, he waged an aggressive campaign against organized crime and corruption in the labour movement (the subject of The Enemy Within), and he became an increasingly important figure in the civil rights movement, deploying federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and overseeing the federal response to the integration crises at the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama.
After his brother’s assassination in November 1963, Kennedy entered a period of profound grief that transformed his political vision. He read widely — Camus, the Greek tragedians, Emerson — and emerged with a deeper, more philosophical understanding of suffering, injustice, and the uses of power. He was elected Senator from New York in 1964 and became an increasingly vocal critic of the Vietnam War and an advocate for the poor, visiting impoverished communities in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and Native American reservations.
The Enemy Within (1960)
Kennedy’s first book documents his work as chief counsel to the Senate Rackets Committee (1957–1959), investigating corruption in the Teamsters union under Jimmy Hoffa and Dave Beck. The book is a prosecutorial narrative — detailed, morally certain, relentlessly focused on the damage that organised crime inflicts on working people. Kennedy’s personal feud with Hoffa, which extended through his tenure as Attorney General, is one of the defining political confrontations of the era.
To Seek a Newer World (1967)
Written during his Senate years, this book lays out Kennedy’s evolving political philosophy on the major issues of the late 1960s: Vietnam, nuclear proliferation, race relations, youth alienation, and the crisis of American cities. The title comes from Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” The book is notable for its willingness to address difficult questions directly — particularly on Vietnam, where Kennedy was moving from initial support for the war toward opposition — and for its genuine intellectual engagement with ideas rather than slogans.
Thirteen Days (1969)
Published posthumously, Thirteen Days is Kennedy’s memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the world came closer to nuclear war than at any other moment in history. As a member of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm), RFK was at the centre of the thirteen-day crisis. The memoir — brief, tense, detailed — provides an insider’s account of the deliberations and is one of the essential documents of Cold War history. It describes the process by which the Kennedy administration rejected both military strikes and appeasement in favour of the naval quarantine, and it portrays JFK as a leader who resisted the pressure for escalation from his military advisors.
The book has been the subject of historical debate — some historians argue that it overstates RFK’s role and understates the contributions of others — but it remains the most vivid firsthand account of the crisis.
Legacy and Collecting
Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on 5 June 1968 — moments after winning the California primary — has been regarded as one of the great “what if” moments in American political history. His campaign had united Black voters, white working-class voters, and Latino voters in a coalition that no subsequent Democratic candidate has fully replicated.
The Enemy Within (1960, Harper & Brothers) in first edition brings $50–$200. Thirteen Days (1969, W.W. Norton) brings $30–$100. Signed copies of The Enemy Within are available and sought by collectors of political Americana. Kennedy was a vigorous signer.