| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Kennedy versus Lodge: The 1952 Massachusetts Senate Race. By Thomas J. Whalen. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000. xii, 216 pp. $28.95, ISBN 1-55553-462-7.)

In his foreword to Thomas J. Whalen's Kennedy versus Lodge, Robert Dallek predicts that the book will "stand as the definitive study" of its subject. He may be right. Few books are written on individual Senate elections, and Whalen has effectively mined the appropriate primary sources and has told the story of the campaign well. On the other hand, much of the narrative is neither new nor much more informative than other, briefer treatments of the subject. What is lacking is in-depth analysis of the results of the election and how those results related to broader electoral forces in 1952. 1

Two of the few secondary sources cited by Whalen, Christopher Matthews's Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (1996) and Herbert Parmet's Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy (1980), tell essentially the same story of this election. The most useful details provided by Whalen concern the famous "Kennedy teas," which allegedly contributed greatly to JFK's drawing power among female voters. Yet there is no discussion of the impact of women voters in the election, except for a table in the appendix that shows increases in turnout in selected Massachusetts cities in 1952 as compared to 1946. Even conceding the lack of exit poll data that make sophisticated voter analysis possible for more recent elections, surely there are better ways to assess the size and significance of the women's vote as it related to JFK's victory. . . .

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