We Band of Brothers

Edwin Guthman and Robert Kennedy met in 1956 when Kennedy, an investigator for a Senate subcommittee, went to Seattle to see Guthman, a young reporter whose newspaper had been building up a file on Dave Beck, the Teamster president suspected of gross corruption. This initial association deepened in 1961, when Guthman went to Washington to join the energetic and idealistic young men--the "band of brothers"--Kennedy was bringing into the Justice Department.

Vividly, lucidly, Guthman recapitulates the crises, the catastrophes and the occasional victories of seven years of our national life--many of which, even in retrospect, make one tremble as one reads. These include the desperate, down-to-the-wire negotiations for the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners held by Castro; the near-revolutionary chaos and mob violence which erupted when the Freedom Riders launched their demonstration and, later, when James Meredith tried to register at Ole Miss; a setback of a different sort when Kennedy delivered an antitrust speech to a group of outraged New York businessmen; and his most difficult decision as Attorney General, when it became necessary to prosecute the brother of a political figure who had played a key role in John Kennedy's campaign for the Presidential nomination. Guthman explores the deteriorating relationship between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, especially after Kennedy's return from a journey to the Far East undertaken for the Administration, tells why Kennedy lost his respect for J. Edgar Hoover, reviews from the inside the campaign for U.S. Senator from New York, and touches candidly on the unhappy controversy over William Manchester's THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT.

WE BAND OF BROTHERS is also a revealing, personal narrative of the maturing of an exceptional man. The thought of what Robert Kennedy might have become, Guthman writes, what he might have done--this is what makes his loss seem greater with each day that passes.