| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver. By Scott Stossel. (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2004. xxx, 761 pp. $32.50, ISBN 1-58834-127-5.)

In Seinfeld, a popular sitcom of the 1990s, the character Elaine asks, "Whatever happened to Sargent Shriver? Is he still with the Kennedys? ... Is he out of the loop?" Indeed, by then Sargent Shriver seemed to have fallen off the political landscape, and remembrances of him too often conveyed a slightly negative tone. In Sarge, Scott Stossel, senior editor of the Atlantic Monthly, resurrects the career of one of the most important public figures of the 1960s. Shriver not only played an important role in John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign and interregnum, he was also the founding father of the Peace Corps, perhaps the most unique and successful federal initiative of the 1960s, and from 1964 to 1966 he concurrently served as the director of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. While the Job Corps and community action programs proved disappointing, other Shriver-created initiatives such as Head Start, Neighborhood Health Services, and Legal Services for the Poor have had enduring successes. In the 1960s and 1970s, Shriver also had strong party support for various national offices, eventually becoming George McGovern's running mate in 1972 after Thomas Eagleton's forced departure. Stossel depicts Shriver as a creative leader, an intellectual, someone who connected easily with people. In many ways, according to Stossel, Shriver's abilities more than matched those of the Kennedy brothers with whom he was closely linked.

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