The best thing JFK ever did.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - John F. Kennedy - Brief article

I really enjoyed reading Chris Matthews's Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero. Chris's understanding, unique among the commentariat, of working-class voters, especially the Irish Catholic subset, helps explain the ardent and crucial support they gave Kennedy in the 1960 election.

Matthews is also at his best in showing how Kennedy came through in the clutch during the Cuban missile crisis at "the time of our greatest peril," not by being truculent but by putting himself in Kruschev's...