Mooney, Brian C.

views updated

MOONEY, Brian C.

PERSONAL: Married Rosemary Lappin (a television news producer); children: one daughter. Education: Graduated from College of the Holy Cross.

ADDRESSES: Home—Andover, MA. Offıce—c/o Boston Globe, P.O. Box 55819, Boston, MA 02205-5819. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist and author. Reporter for newspapers in Boston, MA, area for over thirty years, including Boston Herald, Lowell Sun, and Medford Daily Mercury; Boston Globe, Boston, reporter, c. 1988—.

WRITINGS:

(With Michael Kranish and Nina J. Easton) John F.Kerry: The Complete Biography, Public Affairs (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Long-time journalist Brian C. Mooney has worked for a number of newspapers in the Boston area over the last three decades, and since the late 1980s has been affiliated with the Boston Globe where he has served as city hall bureau chief, reported for the paper's Spotlight team, and written a political column. His focus on politics led him to coauthor the first in-depth biography of 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Senator John F. Kerry.

A joint effort with fellow journalists Nina J. Easton and Michael Kranish, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography delves deeply into the politician's history, uncovering information of which even Kerry was unaware. Gary Dorrien, in a review for Christian Century, remarked that "the disclosures about his Jewish background were amazing to Kerry: 'This is incredible stuff. I think it is more than interesting; it is a revelation.'. . . . Kerry allowed that the Globe investigation offered a 'new personal lesson about diversity and the American mosaic.' More personally, it was also a reminder 'of how so much of America's history is buried.'" The biography traces Kerry's roots back to his grandfather, Fritz Kohn, a Czech Jew who changed his name to Frederick Kerry and converted to Catholicism in order to escape anti-Semitic sentiments in Europe, and, on his mother's side, to the Reverend John Forbes, a Scot who held a colonial position in East Florida and remained a loyalist during the American Revolution. Kerry's ancestors also include the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor, John Winthrop.

Aside from addressing Kerry's family history, Mooney and his colleagues examine the senator's political development, tracing his work from his early days in school, through his experiences in Vietnam and on through his career in Washington, D.C. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked that the biography is "written in the lucid, straightforward prose one expects from a newspaper writing team," and went on to remark that "the authors take critical issues head-on." Anthony Howard, in a review for the Spectator, noted the differences between John F. Kerry and the typical "campaign biography," stating that, "far from being a dazzling encomium of the qualities of the Democratic candidate in this autumn's presidential election, it offers a cool (and at times almost chilling) assessment of the various episodes that have gone into the making of the career of the present junior senator from Massachusetts." Boston Globe contributor David Yepsen observed that "the picture the book paints of Kerry is often not very flattering. He comes off as a driven politician with no compass, only a finger to the wind." He added that "the work lacks much of the color and texture you find in rich biographies. . . . the world of Boston and Massachusetts politics is a colorful one, and we could have used a few more of the best tales." Overall, the critic concluded, "those are nitpicks, not flaws. For those of us who need to know Kerry as well as the Globe knows him, this book is useful."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Boston Globe, May 2, 2004, David Yepsen, "Often Unflattering Look at a Man Who Would Be President," p. D7; July 25, 2004, Harris Collingwood, "What Makes George and John Run? Deliberative to a Fault, Occasionally Opaque, Kerry Cuts a Complex Figure," p. E6.

Christian Century, August 24, 2004, Gary Dorrien, "Pursuing Kerry," pp. 18-23.

New York Times Book Review, August 15, 2004, Christopher Hitchens, "A War Hero and an Antiwar Hero," pp. 11-12.

Spectator, June 5, 2004, Anthony Howard, "An Ersatz Boston Brahmin," p. 43.

Villager, June 9-15, 2004, Lincoln Anderson, "Reporters' Book Tries to Answer: Who Is John Kerry?"