Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is Seymour Hersh's "The Dark Side of Camelot." Published in 1997, the book offers a very negative view of President John F. Kennedy and his administration, challenging the mythic image of "Camelot" and the idealized portrait of Kennedy family's legacy of public service. Hersh presents JFK as a deeply flawed figure whose private behavior and shady political dealings had serious consequences for the country.

Much of the story Hersh recounts has been well known, though meticulously obscured, for years. Kennedy's Mob connections, his incessant womanizing, his addiction to drugs, his poor health, the outright theft of the 1960 election were hidden from public view by the keepers of the Kennedy Flame. As Hersh makes clear, Kennedy's extramarital affairs were not just a personal peccadillo of his. They were evidence of a recklessness that on more than one occasion endangered national security. When it came to sharing mistresses with a Mob figure such as Sam Giancana, Kennedy's recklessness could have cost him his life.

Hersh is no less critical when it comes to JFK's foreign policy. He has little time for the approbation invariably reserved for JFK's supposed deft handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As Hersh rightly points out, there would have been no missile crisis had the Kennedy administration not foolishly insisted on placing medium-range Jupiter missiles in Turkey, within easy range of Crimea--the summer vacation spot of Soviet leaders.

On Vietnam, JFK was an unmitigated disaster, signing off on the disastrous 1963 coup that led to the overthrow and murder of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem. The coup led the destabilization and near-collapse of South Vietnam. It was an act of extraordinary recklessness, and Kennedy's failure to anticipate its long-term consequences demonstrated his unerring poor judgment.

The myth of "Camelot" surrounding John F. Kennedy’s presidency, Hersh argues, was a carefully crafted facade that obscured serious moral, ethical, and political failings. More than any other president in U.S. history, Kennedy prioritized personal pleasure and political ambition over integrity and national security. The Kennedy legacy was built on image management and manipulation, and it has had deleterious lasting consequences for American politics and society.

Hersh is a great writer. The facts he uncovers are fascinating. Even if you don't believe everything Hersh claims, even if you don't accept all of the sordid details Hersh recounts here, even if you refuse to credit all of the sordid witnesses and their sordid allegations, the picture Hersh presents of JFK is a damning one.