According to Publisher's Weekly: "Out of his gut interest in politics and love of reading biographies of American heroes, Matthews,
host of MSNBC's Hardball, probes the details of the 35th president's life and career to find out what Jack was like ..." Drawing on
interviews with friends and former staffers, as well as on such familiar biographical incidents as Kennedy's rescue of the PT-109
crew and his resulting back injury, Matthews reveals a man who through inner direction and tenacious will created himself out of
the loneliness and illness of his youth and who taught himself the hard discipline of politics through his own triumphs and
failures ... Matthews's stirring biography reveals Kennedy as a "fighting prince never free from pain, never far from trouble,
and never accepting the world he found."
