The Kennedys and the Women they destroyed – USA

19th September 2025

Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women they destroyed by Maureen Callahan – USA

This is a very readable account and interpretation of the lives of many of the women in the American Kennedy clan. It is depressing how SO many women, who had a significant level of association with the Kennedy males, ended up just a shadow of their former selves. Or ended up dead.

This book, as the Observer says, is “a timely reminder of the dangers posed by men who crave power”, and it certainly proved to be a pertinent read. The tenet became ingrained in the political leaders of the USA, and, of course, as I write this, the Oval Office is once again mired in the abhorrent controversy surrounding the Epstein files and there is clear fire-fighting and denial in an attempt at damage limitation. The women are rail-roaded and side-lined to protect the men involved, nothing new there. And this just feels like a repeat of what the author shares in her book about the Kennedys.

Buy Now

She looks at each woman who had some involvement with the dynasty, and starts with Rose and Joe, the matriarch and patriarch. He a serial philanderer and abuser and she, a woman who has learned to withstand his onslaughts by hardening herself. Together they produced nine offspring, and the three particularly well known brothers were John (often called Jack, to wit JFK), Bobby and Ted. And all led lives where misogyny was laced with brutality. The first two suffered untimely deaths.

The story opens with the short-lived life of Carolyn Bessette, married just a couple of years to eligbile bachelor John Kennedy (son of Jack and Jackie Kennedy Onassis). He attempted to fly with her and her sister in his small plane to a wedding on the fashionable East Coast, he had just had his leg removed from a cast (he therefore wasn’t very fit) and he only had 55 hours experience of flying in daylight. This was night time and thus it was a disaster in the making. He lost control of the plane and it plummeted into the ocean. They all died.

Ted was involved in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, leaving her to drown at Chappaquiddick after he drove the car off the road and the focus soon turned to ensuring he wasn’t charged with any crime – never forgetting his carelessness (drinking and driving were instrumental in Mary Jo’s death). She apparently struggled for an hour in the upturned car, anticipating  help, and he simply took himself off to a hotel. Help never came. It was always known as the Chappaquiddick affair, Mary Jo as a person has rarely been mentioned in connection with the incident.

The theme of brinkmanship, foolhardiness and risk-taking dogged many male family members throughout their lives and of course had consequences for female companions and relatives.

The author portrays the family traits, embodied by Joe, through the generations, as soul-less, manipulative, entitled and misogynistic, men without nurture or boundaries. Exactly those ‘attributes’ created men who lacked empathy, driven by  what today would be undoubtedly be recognised as sexual addiction. When people have a licence to do anything they want, it can come hand-in-hand with pronounced behaviour that sails far too close to the wind. Behaviour also fuelled by drug use.

With their serial adultery the men infected their wives and it was then deemed problematical if the wives struggled to get pregnant (chlamydia infection can limit fertility and inhibit the ability to carry a child to term). The females were useful cogs in the blame game, the men got off scot free. There is one particularly shocking example of childbirth that was perilous for mother and child –  the doctor was held up, the midwife attending could easily have overseen the birth but didn’t because the doctor (male, of course) did not want to be denied his fee. And therefore the child was kept in the birth canal for quite some time, awaiting the arrival of the doctor and causing incredible harm all round. The author goes on to describe a litany of abusive interactions, cruelty, and craven behaviour among the men over the decades and over successive generations.

As a child, I was aware of the Kennedys and their various scandals, at some point I had  heard the ‘I am a Berliner’ speech, rallying and rousing, Jack Kennedy the face of the Cold War years. I had admired the charisma of Jackie Kennedy, I had noted the sad face of Carolyn Bessette. I knew Marylin Monroe was involved simultaneously with Jack and Bob. I had heard about Rosemary and Mary. But I had never really tied their stories into a whole construct. Thus I found it illuminating to be able to drill behind the well guarded Catholic front of this revered family, whilst also feeling once again disheartened about the behaviour that so often goes hand-in-hand with men in power. Has much changed in today’s political circles? I doubt it, given all the scandals that are being glossed over and suppressed at the moment.

This is a very interesting and well researched look at the women in the lives of the revered Kennedys, a name that was (and for many still is) synonymous with power, wealth, vanity and venality.

It would have been really helpful to have a family tree in the book, to keep straight all the people involved.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

Buy Now

Join team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (@tripfiction)

Subscribe to future blog posts