The history of big business unfolds in a definitive biography of the wealthiest of American families that profiles personalities as well as chronicling the growth of the Mellon Bank, Alcoa, Koppers, and the Gulf Company

In this groundbreaking biography of Edward Kennedy, historian and journalist Burton Hersh combines a lifetime of research and reporting with a lively mixture of never–before–told anecdotes (including the definitive version of the incident at Chappaquiddick, the details of which Kennedy himself filled in for Hersh shortly after it occurred) to create a broad yet unfailingly intimate portrait of the politician who would be universally acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's greatest American legislators. Hersh was acquainted with Kennedy since his college days, and the result here is a unique series of revelations that serve to reinterpret the senator's public and private personas. Conditioned by deep–seated fears that he was an afterthought within his own powerful family, Kennedy developed a genius for conciliation and strategizing that made him a dramatically more effective political figure than either of his older brothers. In addition to this biography's account of the Chappaquiddick incident, Hersh also delivers the first full report of the vendetta between Kennedy and Richard Nixon, exposing the behind–the–scenes manipulations to which Kennedy resorted to drive Nixon from office during the Watergate scandal.

At the heart of The Shadow President is a controversial idea - that, more than is brothers, Ted Kennedy has come to be the most influential political figure of this generation. His challenge to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 primaries, his bitter rearguard defense of social programs during the Reagan-Bush years, and the many upheavals in his personal life are all fully treated here.