True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy audiobook

True Compass: A Memoir

By Edward M. Kennedy
Read by John Bedford Lloyd

Hachette Book Group

Unabridged

Format : Library CD (In Stock)
  • 1 Format: Library CD

  • ISBN: 9781600249907

Runtime: 19.05 Hours
Category: Nonfiction/Biography & Autobiography
Audience: Adult
Language: English
Sign In For Price

Summary

Summary

A #1 New York Times bestseller

A USA Today bestseller

Edward M. Kennedy is widely regarded as one of the greatest senators in the nation’s history. He is also the patriarch of America’s most heralded family. In this landmark autobiography, five years in the making, Senator Kennedy speaks with unprecedented candor about his extraordinary life. He writes movingly of his brothers and their influence on him; his marriage to the woman who changed his life, Victoria Reggie Kennedy; his role in the major events of our time (from the civil rights movement to the election of Barack Obama); and how his recent diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor has given even greater urgency to his long crusade for improved health care for all Americans. Written with warmth, wit, and grace, True Compass is Edward M. Kennedy’s inspiring legacy to readers and to history.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

In bringing Kennedy's sweeping memoir to life, John Bedford Lloyd conveys an intimacy and sincerity that allows for reverence without idolatry...Bonus features include a video interview, largely a summary of the book's contents, though still priceless from the standpoint of historical posterity. The PDF of photographs offers a rather impressive visual resource spanning the time period of Kennedy's narrative. —Publishers Weekly
“Based on fifty years of notes and journal entries, this monumentally moving memoir illuminates nearly every aspect of the late senator’s personal and public life and times. With incomparable wit and candor, Kennedy offers up his perspective on senate colleagues, presidents past, and most of all himself, revealing the tarnish along with the triumphs…Deeply affecting on the subjects of grief, his battle with brain cancer and his devotion to family, sailing, and the senate, this is an astonishingly intimate self-portrait of a man whose belief that ‘if you persevere…you have a real opportunity to achieve something’ was born out by his extraordinary life.” —People
“Teddy has made a final, persuasive case for why he may actually be his family’s greatest torchbearer.” —Time
“[A] deeply affecting memoir…he writes with searching candor about the losses, joys, and lapses of his life; the love and closeness of his family; the solace he found in sailing and the sea; his complex relationships with political allies and rivals. Mr. Kennedy’s conversational gifts as a storyteller and his sense of humor—so often remarked on by colleagues and friends—shine through here, as does his old-school sense of public service and his hard-won knowledge, in his son Teddy Jr.’s words, that ‘even our most profound losses are survivable.’” —New York Times
“Touchingly candid, big-hearted, and altogether superb…This is a book whose clarity of recollection and expression entitles it to share in the lineage established by America’s first great memoir of public life—The Autobiography of U. S. Grant, which he wrote while himself dying of cancer…Kennedy was a devoted diarist whose natural gifts as a storyteller and as a sharp, painterly observer shine through every page.” —Los Angeles Times
“Often touching…After a life chronicled in tabloid chatter and often vicious editorial cartoons, Kennedy tells his own story here…His accounts are richly detailed. As a reporter covering Kennedy decades ago, I learned that he was keeping a diary and knew what a treasure it would someday be. It is.” —Boston Globe
“In bringing Kennedy’s sweeping memoir to life, John Bedford Lloyd conveys an intimacy and sincerity that allows for reverence without idolatry. Lloyd does his best work in conveying the Lion of the Senate’s introspective musings on family, faith, and loss.” —Publishers Weekly

Reviews

Reviews

Be the first to review this product

Author

Author Bio: Edward M. Kennedy

Author Bio: Edward M. Kennedy

Edward M. Kennedy (1932–2009) represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for forty-seven years, making him one of the longest-serving senators in American history. In 2004 he began interviews at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia for an oral history project about his life. For his 2009 memoir, True Compass, he drew from his fifty years of contemporaneous notes from his personal diaries and worked closely on the book with Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers, coauthor of Flags of Our Fathers and author of Mark Twain: A Life.

Titles by Author

Details

Details

Available Formats : Library CD
Category: Nonfiction/Biography & Autobiography
Runtime: 19.05
Audience: Adult
Language: English

1-800-621-0182

Serving libraries since 1987, Blackstone Library is your one-stop shop for audiobooks. We are dedicated to providing top-quality audio content, offering over 82,500 unabridged titles—with more than 1,000 new releases and 625+ exclusive titles added each month.

©2026 Blackstone Library . All rights reserved. Privacy Terms of Use Purchase Terms Cookie Policy ©2026 Blackstone Library . All rights reserved.