Based on genealogical breakthroughs and previously unreleased records, here, for the first time, is the inspiring story of the poor Irish refugee couple who launched the Kennedy dynasty in America. 40,000 first printing. Illustrations. - (Baker & Taylor)

“Here is that rare thing: an untold chapter in the Kennedy saga. . .Compelling and illuminating.”—Jon Meacham

Based on genealogical breakthroughs and previously unreleased records, this is the first book to explore the inspiring story of the poor Irish refugee couple who escaped famine; created a life together in a city hostile to Irish, immigrants, and Catholics; and launched the Kennedy dynasty in America.

Their Irish ancestry was a hallmark of the Kennedys’ initial political profile, as JFK leveraged his working-class roots to connect with blue-collar voters. Today, we remember this iconic American family as the vanguard of wealth, power, and style rather than as the descendants of poor immigrants. Here at last, we meet the first American Kennedys, Patrick and Bridget, who arrived as many thousands of others did following the Great Famine—penniless and hungry. Less than a decade after their marriage in Boston, Patrick’s sudden death left Bridget to raise their children single-handedly. Her rise from housemaid to shop owner in the face of rampant poverty and discrimination kept her family intact, allowing her only son P.J. to become a successful saloon owner and businessman. P.J. went on to become the first American Kennedy elected to public office—the first of many.

Written by the grandson of an Irish immigrant couple and based on first-ever access to P.J. Kennedy’s private papers, The First Kennedys is a story of sacrifice and survival, resistance and reinvention: an American story.

NEAL THOMPSON is a journalist and the author of five highly acclaimed books, including A Curious Man, Driving with the Devil, and the fatherhood-and-skateboarding memoir Kickflip Boys. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Esquire, Outside, Oprah.com, and more and has taught creative nonfiction at Hugo House and the Great Smokies Writing Program. He lives in Seattle with his family.
 

Booklist Reviews

Much has been written about the Kennedy dynasty of the twentieth century, but Thompson (Kickflip Boys, 2018) takes us back to where it all began. When Bridget Murphy and Patrick Kennedy embarked on their long exodus from Ireland to the United States, they had no idea that they would be the genesis of American royalty. Fleeing a country ravaged by famine, they faced immeasurable hardship in a new land unwelcoming to the Irish. The couple persevered in the face of discrimination, diligently striving to provide for their burgeoning family. Illness left Bridget a widowed, single mother—a difficult situation by today's standards, nearly impossible in the 1800s. The fiercely independent woman hustled her way from maid to small-business owner. Bridget's tenacious drive paved the way for her son P.J., the first Kennedy elected to office, to thrive entrepreneurially and politically. Thompson's impressive research and engaging exposition create a unique addition to the Kennedy canon. This is not just the story of the Kennedys; Thompson paints a picture of life for many Irish immigrants. History buffs should pick up this book immediately. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

In Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, CNN anchor Avlon addresses President Abraham Lincoln's conciliatory vision regarding the post-Civil War era, aiming to show how it influenced activists from Nelson Mandela to Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. (75,000-copy first printing). The New York Times best-selling Baime's White Lies profiles Black civil rights activist Walter F. White, who figured largely in the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP while leading a dual life as a reporter investigating racial violence in the South because he could pass for white (40,000-copy first printing). Chapin, The President's Man, here recalls his years as personal aide, special assistant, and finally deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon as the 50th anniversary of Watergate looms. In African Founders, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fischer shows that enslaved Africans brought with them skills ranging from animal husbandry to ethics that profoundly shaped colonial and early U.S. society (100,000-copy first printing). A conservative gay reporter who has received awards from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Kirchick dug through multitudinous declassified documents and interviewed over 100 people to write Secret City, which profiles the impact of the LGBTQ+ community on Washington, DC, politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. A multi-award-winning journalist and professor emeritus at Champlain College, Randall intends to show that not only were The Founders' Fortunes pledged in support of the Revolutionary War but that concerns about their fortunes helped prompt it. A professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Thompson is an acknowledged expert in the national debate surrounding Smashing Statues—should controversial public monuments be pulled down or allowed to stand? Journalist/author Thompson ( Kickflip Boys) uses newly released records to tell the story of Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, who fled Ireland's Great Famine for Boston, MA, and became The First Kennedys, founders of a political dynasty.

Library Journal Reviews

Journalist Thompson (Kickflip Boys) may surprise both general readers and historians with a Kennedy book based on newly accessible materials and differently focused on the family's first members in the United States: John F. Kennedy Jr.'s Irish immigrant paternal great grandparents. Benefiting from the papers in the Kennedy Library of P.J. Kennedy (the only surviving son of Bridget Murphy Kennedy and her husband Patrick) as well as digital ancestry databases, this winsomely written book employs cultural context, empathy, multiple viewpoints, and careful evaluation of sources. Central are the entrepreneurial, too-soon widowed, resilient matriarch Bridget and her equally risk-taking youngest child P.J. With more street than book smarts, he went from working in shops and saloons to holding local elected office, navigating fluctuating Prohibition laws, and overcoming antipathy to his ethnicity and religion. Thompson notes that Catholics protested hegemonic American Protestant-dominated schools, often countering with their own. As for the Fitzgerald family, the author concentrates on "Honey Fitz" (JFK Jr.'s maternal grandfather, the mayor of Boston) and culminates with the marriage of JFK Jr.'s parents, Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald. VERDICT This is both an absorbing family story and a saga of the Irish diaspora in Boston, a city that eventually accepted the Kennedys and allowed the ambitious family to achieve versions of the American dream before fate intervened.—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.