Twilight of Camelot - by Steven Levingston (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the author of the "insightful and well-crafted" (The Wall Street Journal) Kennedy and King comes a heart-wrenching and sensitive examination of the tragic loss of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's premature son, Patrick, and how their shared grief brought them closer together in the months leading up to his assassination.

In April 1963, President Kennedy and the First Lady announced the pregnancy of their third child--joyful news after years of miscarriages and the stillborn birth of a daughter in 1956. But on August 7th, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born six weeks premature and died less than two days later.

In this probing, soulful account of the struggle to save Patrick, Steven Levingston takes us inside the long-troubled relationship of Jack and Jackie as they faced one of the most difficult experiences of their marriage. With a "perceptive and eloquent" (The Christian Science Monitor) voice, Levingston reveals how Patrick's death, tragic as it was, ultimately brought the couple closer together and set the President on a trajectory to be a better husband and father in the months leading up to their fateful campaign trip to Dallas.

For his definitive account of Patrick's brief but influential life, Levingston draws on first-ever interviews with doctors who treated Jackie and Patrick, in-depth revelations of the Secret Service agent in whose speeding car Jackie nearly gave birth prematurely, and on new archival documents. Twilight of Camelot is a fresh and humanizing portrait of one of the most famous and complicated couples of the 20th century, and a pulsating drama that illuminates one of the least-known periods in Kennedy family history.

Review Quotes

"A moving account of the long medical shadow cast by the very short life of the Kennedy White House baby, tracing the story through personal and political history and reminding us how recent and remarkable is the ability to care for premature and critically ill newborns." --Perri Klass, MD, professor of journalism and pediatrics at New York University and author of The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

"This is a tender, deeply reported story of love reborn after a grief that spares no one. Steven Levingston combines the full force of his talents as a veteran journalist with the grace and wonder of a writer at his peak. Finally, we know how Patrick Bouvier Kennedy's tragically short life launched a medical movement that saves the lives of millions of premature babies every year. This is the hope we crave." --Connie Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author of The Daughters of Erietown

"A poignant contribution to Kennedy lore." --Kirkus

"Twilight of Camelot tells, with nuance and immediacy, the story of the short life of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy--and its lasting aftereffects, including in the field of neonatal medicine. Steven Levingston has long been a first-class chronicler of the Kennedy years, and he shows it once again in this sterling book." --Fredrik Logevall, author of JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956

"Steven Levingston's Twilight of Camelot movingly illuminates the heart rendering saga of the death of President John F. and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's infant son in 1963. This narrative stands as a testimonial to the Kennedys' stoic courage, Catholic faith and iron-willed endurance. Elegantly written and brilliantly researched, this history-driven lament of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is an essential addition in the U.S. presidential history field writ large. Highly recommended!" --Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race


"With a keen reporter's eye and masterful narrative skill, Steven Levingston gives us an intimate account of the twilight of Jack and Jackie Kennedy's marriage and how they lost a baby son. It is a heart-rending story, but also surprisingly hopeful about what can come from tragedy." --Evan Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of Robert Kennedy: His Life

About the Author

Steven Levingston was senior editor and nonfiction book editor for The Washington Post. He is the author of Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership; Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle Over Civil Rights; and Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Époque Paris. Before editing and writing for The Washington Post, Levingston was business editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and an Asia correspondent in Hong Kong and a financial reporter in New York for The Wall Street Journal. His work has also appeared in Time, The Washington Post Magazine, The New Yorker, Reader's Digest, and The Boston Globe Magazine. He has been featured on PBS NewsHour, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, C-SPAN, and in the Netflix documentary Amend. He founded and directed Boston University's business journalism program.