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I've often wondered how history would have viewed Jack Kennedy if he'd died a natural death rather than by an assassin's bullet. As an extension of that I've also thought that he might not have lived that much longer had nature been allowed to take its course. He's one of the most-written-about Presidents of all time and finding a new angle – even a fictional one – is not easy, but Jed Mercurio has looked at Kennedy's adult life through the prism of his sexual peccadilloes and his health.

If you're looking for a sexually titillating book then this isn't for you. It's a book about sex but with no sex in it. In fact it's oddly, almost clinically distant from Kennedy, referring to him as ''the subject'' throughout the book. It's almost a report, but whom it's written for is never clear. Is it a medical report? There are certainly enough major medical problems to make him an interesting study. It could, of course, be for the security services as the continuing debate about who was behind his assassination makes it clear that there was no shortage of people who wanted to see him dead.

For a factual account of the Cuban Missile Crisis we can recommend [[One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs]]. For a reliable history of the Kennedy years, try [[Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot]]. If you'd like more fiction about nineteen-sixties America we can recommend [[America, America by Ethan Canin]].

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