All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia

(Hardback)

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"Apowerful story, skillfully told."Booklist

A new portrait of Robert Kennedy, a politician who, for all his faults, had the uncommon courage to stand up to a president from his own party and shine a light on America's shortcomings

In early 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy ventured deep into the heart ofAppalachiato gauge the progress of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Kennedy viewed his two days in Kentucky as an opportunity to test his antiwar and antipoverty message with hardscrabble white voters.

Among the strip mines, one-room schoolhouses, and dilapidated homes, however, Kennedy encountered a strong mistrust and intense resentment of establishment politicians.

InAll This Marvelous Potential, author Matthew Algeo meticulously retraces RFK's tour of eastern Kentucky, visiting the places he visited and meeting with the people he met. Algeo explains how and why the region has changed since 1968, and why it matters for the rest of the country.

The similarities between then and now are astonishing: divisive politics, racial strife, economic uncertainty, and environmental alarm.

Reviews

"I've been waiting thirty-five years, since I was a young reporter at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, for someone to do justice to Bobby Kennedy's milepost trip across eastern Kentucky. Matthew Algeo's new book makes it worth that wait." Larry Tye, author of Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon
"a powerful story, skillfully told." Booklist
"a concise historical analysis through which stories of Appalachia's coal country, and its residents' poverty, make clear the challenges of the past and the legacies that shaped a more hopeful future." Foreword Reviews
"This face-paced narrative, focusing less on Kennedy and more on local people, will find audiences among those who enjoyed J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy and Tony Horowitz's Spying on the South ." Library Journal

Author Bio

Matthew Algeo is the author of Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, The President Is a Sick Man, and Abe & Fido. An award-winning journalist, Algeo has reported from four continents for public radio's All Things Considered, Marketplace, and Morning Edition.