The Senator from Central Casting David Koskoff

The Senator from Central Casting

Author: David Koskoff

Publisher: New American Political Press

Publication Date: 01 May, 2011

ISBN: 9780615419268

Pages:

Subjects: Biographies, Political science, History, Business

Available as: , Trade Cloth, 978-0-615-41926-8 E-Book - Portable Document Format, 978-0-9833066-1-0 E-Book - EPUB, 978-0-9833066-0-3

Description:

A layered biography of Connecticut Senator Thomas J. Dodd, who was propelled to national prominence in the 1950s by his mesmerizing oratory and relentless anti-communism, but ended his career in disgrace when the covert action of his most trusted aides exposed his sloppy corruption and his steady alcoholism.

PW Publishers Weekly

Review Source: Publishers Weekly

Review Date: 2011-03-14

Lawyer and political historian Koskoff (Joseph P. Kennedy: A Life and Times) returns to familiar ground with this ambivalent biography of Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (1907-1971), who was censured by the Senate in 1967 after revelations of wide-ranging financial impropriety. Though the Senate disciplined Dodd only for spending campaign money on personal expenses, over 100 columns by the widely read journalists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson laid bare far deeper corruption. Though Koskoff admirably covers Dodd's early life and career, this conversational biography comes alive recounting the senator's crimes, a conspiracy by his staff and former staffers to expose them, and the media furor and subsequent Senate investigation that led to Dodd's censure. The book struggles to reconcile how the "respected, highly competent, and disciplined prosecutor" of the Nuremburg trials could have become, in Koskoff's estimation, a "tragic figure." This well-researched biography presents an unsympathetic man hobbled by a surplus of self-estimation and a deficit of self-awareness, perhaps less tragic than Koskoff would have him. Photos. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.