Today marks the sixteenth anniversary of when Edward Moore Kennedy, Senator of Massachusetts for forty-seven years, and brother of the late President John F. Kennedy (1917–1964), New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968), and Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith (1928–2020), was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on August 29, 2009.
I was in my early twenties at that time. I remember years later, when I visited the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in December of 2015. Standing inside the replica of his Senate office, I watched a video on loop showing how Ted Kennedy worked day to day. The narrator mentioned that Senator Kennedy met with anyone from Massachusetts who wanted to see him. Instantly, I thought that I could have met this man, and I wondered how that meeting might have shaped me at a younger age.
Though I did not meet him, I at least had the privilege of meeting his sister Jean at the JFK Library in 2017. I have written about that meeting before, and I often return to it in my reflections. That encounter has left a lasting impact on me, and its vibrations continue to echo. One of the ways it has done so is by inspiring me to collect books about the Kennedys.
In June of 2024, I put myself on a book-buying ban due to a lack of space in what I dubbed my “Kennedy Korner.” I had resigned myself to the idea that I would never be able to grow my collection further. But in June of 2025, that changed. My roommate found an extra five-tier bookshelf in the spare room and told me I could have it.
After some thought, I acted. In early July, I removed an old mini fridge and an unused desk. That night, after cleaning and decluttering, I moved the brown bookshelf into my room. At the same time, I received an increase in working hours at my job, which gave me the ability to cover my monthly expenses more comfortably and also expand my book collection. The fact that this opportunity and the gift of the large brown bookshelf arrived together felt like an alignment, as if the time had finally come to grow the collection I had once believed could go no further.
On the top three rows of the left brown shelf, I decided to place books on John F. Kennedy: his life, his presidency, the many aspects of his leadership, and the legacy he left behind. There would be books written about him by respected historians like Frederick Logevall, Michael Beschloss, and Robert Dallek, as well as works by those who knew him personally, such as Pierre Salinger, Hugh Sidey, Theodore Sorensen, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. I wanted this to be a serious, well-thought-out collection to use as a foundation for scholarship should I ever wish to write research papers about him and his time.
The bottom two shelves would be dedicated to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994).
My vision for those shelves was to create a place of honor for her, a library within a library that reflects the many dimensions of her life. There would be biographies that trace her journey from Jacqueline Bouvier to First Lady, and later to her remarkable career as an editor in New York. Alongside these are volumes that explore her influence on fashion, art, and culture, as well as books about her family connections, such as her sister Lee Radziwill. I also wanted to include works that highlight her stewardship of history, like the restoration of the White House and her preservation efforts for Lafayette Square.
Her section, in many ways, is about memory and guardianship. While John’s shelves reflect the political and public world he inhabited, Jackie’s shelves reflect a more personal legacy of how she shaped the nation’s sense of history, how she carried her family through times of unimaginable loss, and how she emerged as a figure of resilience and grace. Together, the two sections balance one another: his leadership and her cultural presence, both essential to the Kennedy story.
One important choice I have made in building this collection is to avoid books that focus primarily on President Kennedy’s assassination or on conspiracy theories surrounding it. While that tragic moment in Dallas is inseparable from his story, I do not want my shelves to become a shrine to speculation, rumor, or sensationalism.
I did make a few exceptions. There are only four books I chose with care: From Love Field by Nellie Connally, Five Days in November by Clint Hill, The Death of a President by William Manchester, and Four Days: The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy. I felt that these were respectful, firsthand accounts. I have no plans to collect any other books on the subject, especially not conspiracy related ones.
I want my collection to reflect the fullness of the Kennedys’ lives and legacies, their ideas, their service, their struggles, and the impact they had on history. The assassination is already deeply documented, but it does not define the entirety of President Kennedy’s life or the contributions of his brothers, his sister Jean, or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
By choosing to focus on biographies, memoirs, speeches, and works of history, I aim to build a collection that honors their lives rather than their deaths. To me, the truest way to remember the Kennedys is not by endlessly revisiting the tragedy, but by engaging with the richness of their lived experiences and the hope they represented to so many.
The right bookshelf is devoted to the wider Kennedy family. On the top shelf sit smaller and vintage titles: Conversations with Kennedy by Benjamin C. Bradlee, a first edition of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s A Thousand Days, and a 1961 edition of John F. Kennedy’s Why England Slept.
I feel a special kinship with that copy, having once carried it to Harvard and photographed it outside Winthrop House, where Kennedy himself wrote those words.
The second shelf holds family and dynasty histories like Neal Thompson’s The First Kennedys, works by Thomas Maier and Laurence Leamer, and others.
The third shelf is for Kennedy parents: Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. A friend from Oregon sent me Ronald Kessler’s The Sins of the Father, which I added to honor her interest in Joe Sr. I also ordered Rose’s memoir Times to Remember, placing it alongside Barbara Perry’s biography. Eventually I may add books on Rosemary and Kathleen, though there is no rush.
The fourth shelf holds Robert F. Kennedy: his speeches, biographies by Larry Tye and Evan Thomas, and volumes by his children Kathleen, Maxwell, and Robert Jr.
The bottom shelf is for Edward M. Kennedy. His placement there is not because he was “lesser,” but rather because the shelf suits the flow of the collection. To me, his contribution is as essential as his brothers’ and sisters'.
I am especially glad that I finally received a copy of Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976–2009 by Neal Gabler. I already owned his first volume, Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932–1975, which I purchased back in February 2021. Placing the two volumes side by side gives me a sense of completion, as if the arc of Senator Kennedy’s life and career can now be appreciated in full through Gabler’s careful work. Now I no longer have to wish for it because it is finally here.
Alongside those, I now have Ted Kennedy: A Life by John A. Farrell, Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy edited by Peter S. Canellos, and America Back on Track by Edward M. Kennedy himself. With these recent additions, my Ted Kennedy section has grown to fourteen volumes. It feels fitting that, on this anniversary of his passing, I can look across the shelf and see his story told in depth, not only through the voices of historians and journalists but also through his own words.
A few days after my birthday, I made a trip into Cambridge and picked up a small black bookcase I had found through Facebook Marketplace. It was modest in size, but it gave me exactly the extra space I needed. In the days leading up to that trip, several new arrivals had already come in, and I began the satisfying process of organizing and expanding the collection.
That small black bookcase, humble though it was, carried significance. It represented not only another place for my collection to grow, but also my commitment to shaping a space that reflects both memory and meaning.
In the meantime, throughout July and August, a wave of book lots arrived.
As the books kept coming, I documented the dates of their arrival and looked forward to organizing the collection. Placing the new volumes on the shelves felt like fitting pieces into a puzzle. Each book had its place, some filling gaps I had long wanted to cover, others surprising me by adding dimensions to the story I hadn’t fully considered. Slowly, the Kennedy collection began to take on the look of a true library rather than a scattered cluster of books.
One more title is still on its way. I recently ordered The Senator from New England: The Rise of JFK by Sean J. Savage, a study of his years in the United States Senate after recently discovering a copy of it in a public library in the Boston area. Until now, that period of Kennedy’s career has been a gap in my collection. Living in Massachusetts, I felt it important to understand and be able to articulate his accomplishments as senator from my own state, should anyone ever ask me. When it arrives in September, it will not only add depth to the JFK shelves but also give me a fuller picture of his rise to national leadership.
After this month, I intend to take a pause in collecting more Kennedy books. They no longer need to arrive in waves as they have through July and August. What began as a rush of acquisitions has now found its form in a carefully arranged library, and I feel no urgency to continue at that same pace. Instead, I can allow myself the time to live with the books already on the shelves, to explore them thoughtfully, and to let them shape me in ways that go beyond simple ownership.
From here, I plan to return to collecting more selectively, one volume at a time, as I once did. The foundation has been built, the spaces have been filled, and the shelves now tell a story that feels whole. I am content with the progress that has been made so far. To me, this collection is no longer about acquiring as much as I can, but about deepening the meaning of what I already have.
And so, it feels fitting to close with words from Edward Kennedy Jr., who described his father’s love of history and biography in his eulogy on August 29, 2009:
“Dad instilled in me also the importance of history and biography. He loved Boston and the amazing writers, and philosophers, and politicians from Massachusetts. He took me and my cousins to the Old North Church, and to Walden Pond, and to the homes of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in the Berkshires. He thought that Massachusetts was the greatest place on earth. And he had letters from many of its former senators like Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams hanging on his walls, inspired by things heroic.
He was a Civil War buff. When we were growing up he would pack us all into his car or rented camper, and we would travel around to all the great battlefields. I remember he would frequently meet with his friend Shelby Foote at a particular site on the anniversary of a historic battle, just so he could appreciate better what the soldiers must have experienced on that day. He believed that in order to know what to do in the future, you had to understand the past.”
That same belief, that history and biography guide us forward, is at the heart of why I continue to build this collection. And here in Massachusetts, where so much of the Kennedy story was written, I find it especially meaningful to carry on that work: gathering, curating, and reflecting, so that the lessons of the past can continue to live in the present. In honoring his memory today, I hope that Senator Edward M. Kennedy would look kindly on the collection I have built, and that his brother Jack, Jacqueline, Robert, Jean, and the rest of the family would see in it a tribute worthy of their legacy.
