The Senator from Central Casting: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Thomas J. Dodd

Lawyer and political historian Koskoff (Joseph P. Kennedy: A Life and Times) returns to familiar ground with this ambivalent biography of Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (1907%E2%80%931971), who was censured by the Senate in 1967 after revelations of wide-ranging financial impropriety. Though the Senate disciplined Dodd only for spending campaign money on personal expenses, over 100 columns by the widely read journalists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson laid bare far deeper corruption. Though Koskoff admirably covers Dodd's early life and career, this conversational biography comes alive recounting the senator's crimes, a conspiracy by his staff and former staffers to expose them, and the media furor and subsequent Senate investigation that led to Dodd's censure. The book struggles to reconcile how the "respected, highly competent, and disciplined prosecutor" of the Nuremburg trials could have become, in Koskoff's estimation, a "tragic figure." This well-researched biography presents an unsympathetic man hobbled by a surplus of self-estimation and a deficit of self-awareness, perhaps less tragic than Koskoff would have him. Photos. (May)