Book explores political transformation of RFK and what lessons it provides

In a new book Larry Tye, former reporter at The Boston Globe, explores Bobby Kennedy's political and personal transformation and asks what lessons it provides for an equally divided modern day America. In this exclusive excerpt, Tye suggests Bobby's metamorphosis mirrored that which the US was undergoing as it moved from the 1950s self-satisfied era of Eisenhower to the tumultuous 1960s.

THE Kenendys of Boston were and still are America's First Family, and its most prominent Irish-Americans and Irish-Catholics.

Joseph and Rose's third son, Robert Francis, was and still is the most mysterious and alluring of their nine extraordinary offspring. He started his professional life as a cold warrior and ended it as his nation's hottest-blooded and most promising liberal.