NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK ΓÇó ΓÇ£One of the truly great biographies of our time.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöSean Wilentz,New York Times bestselling author of Bob Dylan in America and The Rise of American Democracy ΓÇ£A landmark study of Washington power politics in the twentieth century in the Robert Caro tradition.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöDouglas BrinkleyNew York Times bestselling author of American Moonshot The epicdefinitive biography of Ted KennedyΓÇöan immersive journey through the life of a complicated man and a sweeping history of the fall of liberalism and the collapse of political morality. Catching the Wind is the first volume of Neal GablerΓÇÖs magisterial two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy. It is at once a human dramaa history of American politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuriesand a study of political morality and the role it played in the tortuous course of liberalism. Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his fatherΓÇÖs fortune and his brothersΓÇÖ coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirtythe Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom sawΓÇöa man both racked by and driven by insecuritya man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed. The last and by most contemporary accounts the least of the Kennedysa lightweight. He lived an agonizing childhoodbeing shuffled from school to school at his motherΓÇÖs whimsuffering numerous humiliationsΓÇöincluding self-inflicted onesΓÇöand being pressed to rise to his brothersΓÇÖ level. He entered the Senate with his colleaguesΓÇÖ lowest expectationsa show horsenot a workhorsebut he used his ΓÇ£ninth-childΓÇÖs talentΓÇ¥ of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator. And with the deaths of his brothers John and Roberthe was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission. In Catching the WindKennedyusing his late brothersΓÇÖ moral authoritybecomes a moving force in the great ΓÇ£liberal hourΓÇ¥ which sees the passage of the anti-poverty program and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Thenwith the election of Richard Nixonhe becomes the leading voice of liberalism itself at a time when its power is waning: a ΓÇ£shadow presidentΓÇ¥ challenging Nixon to keep the American promise to the marginalizedwhile Nixon lives in terror of a Kennedy restoration. Catching the Wind also shows how KennedyΓÇÖs moral authority is eroded by the fatal auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969dealing a blow not just to Kennedy but to liberalism. In this sweeping biographyGabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America.