Twilight of Camelot

“Historian, biographer, and journalist Levingston (Kennedy and King, 2017) casts welcome light onto an often-eclipsed chapter in the Kennedy saga… . A fresh and empathic perspective to a tragic loss.” —Booklist, starred review
“The book offers a bird’s-eye view that affords sympathy for the family and presents JFK as a changed man, both personally and professionally. It showcases Levingston’s knack for narrative history, reinforcing the strength of his previous presidential studies of Kennedy and Obama.” —Library Journal, starred review
“A poignant contribution to Kennedy lore.” —Kirkus
“Twilight of Camelot tells, with nuance and immediacy, the story of the short life of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy—and its lasting aftereffects, including in the field of neonatal medicine. Steven Levingston has long been a first-class chronicler of the Kennedy years, and he shows it once again in this sterling book.” —Fredrik Logevall, author of JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
“Steven Levingston’s Twilight of Camelot movingly illuminates the heart rendering saga of the death of President John F. and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s infant son in 1963. This narrative stands as a testimonial to the Kennedys’ stoic courage, Catholic faith and iron-willed endurance. Elegantly written and brilliantly researched, this history-driven lament of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is an essential addition in the U.S. presidential history field writ large. Highly recommended!” —Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race

“With a keen reporter’s eye and masterful narrative skill, Steven Levingston gives us an intimate account of the twilight of Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s marriage and how they lost a baby son. It is a heart-rending story, but also surprisingly hopeful about what can come from tragedy.” —Evan Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of Robert Kennedy: His Life
“This is a tender, deeply reported story of love reborn after a grief that spares no one. Steven Levingston combines the full force of his talents as a veteran journalist with the grace and wonder of a writer at his peak. Finally, we know how Patrick Bouvier Kennedy’s tragically short life launched a medical movement that saves the lives of millions of premature babies every year. This is the hope we crave.” —Connie Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author of The Daughters of Erietown
“A moving account of the long medical shadow cast by the very short life of the Kennedy White House baby, tracing the story through personal and political history and reminding us how recent and remarkable is the ability to care for premature and critically ill newborns.” —Perri Klass, MD, professor of journalism and pediatrics at New York University and author of The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

Steven Levingston was senior editor and nonfiction book editor for The Washington Post. He is the author of Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership; Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle Over Civil Rights; and Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Époque Paris. Before editing and writing for The Washington Post, Levingston was business editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and an Asia correspondent in Hong Kong and a financial reporter in New York for The Wall Street Journal. His work has also appeared in Time, The Washington Post Magazine, The New Yorker, Reader’s Digest, and The Boston Globe Magazine. He has been featured on PBS NewsHour, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, C-SPAN, and in the Netflix documentary Amend. He founded and directed Boston University’s business journalism program.

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