Just Enough Rope: An Intimate Memoir

By Joan Braden

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394574583
• ISBN13: 9780394574585
• Release Date: October 1989
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Inside the Beltway

This book was roundly criticized upon its release 20 years ago for, predictably, being "gossipy" and "kiss and tell". If you are looking for a serious public policy discussion, go elsewhere. However, if you are interested in politics, especially the Kennedys, Nelson Rockefeller and D.C. social life, you will have a hard time putting this book down. Joan Braden, along with her husband Tom, met while working for Rockefeller in the 50s and went on to California, where he owned a newspaper and she worked for the Kennedys and others, before moving to D.C., where Joan had already spent considerable time. Joan makes clear her love and admiration for Bobby Kennedy, whose California primary campaign she co-chaired. The Bradens, along with John Glenn and Teddy White, gathered up the sleeping young Kennedy children from the Ambassador Hotel after their father was shot. Joan then picked a frantic Jackie Kennedy up at the LA airport and drove her through numerous red lights so that she could see her brother in law before he died. She would become most famous as a socialite (a word her husband disdained) and Tom as a Washington Post columnist and CNN "Crossfire" co-host. Along the way they raised eight children, and his book, Eight is Enough, became the basis for the ABC TV show. The late Mrs. Braden's style is warm and real, leaving the reader to feel that she is sharing her honest, candid, usually positive, and often adoring views of the famous people she knew. Braden might have offended a few insiders with her book, but she left us with a life story worth telling. I never met Joan Braden, but feel like I did after reading her book, and think that I would have liked her a lot.