TRUE COMPASS

John Bedford Lloyd's mellifluous voice lends coherence and intimacy to this first-person narrative. The late senator’s clear, punchy sentence structure is easy for the listener to comprehend. This should be no surprise since the book developed from the University of Virginia's Edward Kennedy Oral History Project. Cape Cod's sea light casts a soft glow on fifty years of American history as seen from Hyannis, where Kennedy wrote much of the book. Like most memoirs by older people, Kennedy's is weighted heavily toward his early life. It effectively captures his youth in the 1940s and ‘50s and the glories and tragedies of the 1960s. Ronald Reagan rates a few anecdotes. George W. Bush barely seems to exist. F.C. 2010 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2009]