Every Day Is Extra

by John Kerry

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

John Kerry tells the story of his remarkable American life—from son of a diplomat to decorated Vietnam veteran, five-term United States senator, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, and Secretary of State for four years—a revealing memoir by a witness to some of the most important events of our recent history.

Every Day Is Extra is John Kerry’s candid personal story. A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the US Navy in 1966, and served in Vietnam. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned, and testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war.

Kerry served as a prosecutor in Massachusetts, then as lieutenant governor, and was elected to the Senate in 1984, eventually serving five terms. In 2004 he was the Democratic presidential nominee and came within one state—Ohio—of winning. Kerry returned to the Senate, chaired the important Foreign Relations Committee, and succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2013. In that position he tried to find peace in the Middle East; dealt with the Syrian civil war while combatting ISIS; and negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.

Every Day Is Extra is Kerry’s passionate, insightful, sometimes funny, always moving account of his life. Kerry tells wonderful stories about colleagues Ted Kennedy and John McCain, as well as President Obama and other major figures. He writes movingly of recovering his faith while in the Senate, and deplores the hyper-partisanship that has infected Washington.

Few books convey as convincingly as this one the life of public service like that which John Kerry has lived for fifty years. Every Day Is Extra shows Kerry for the dedicated, witty, and authentic man that he is, and provides forceful testimony for the importance of diplomacy and American leadership to address the increasingly complex challenges of a more globalized world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501178955
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	714,610
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

John Forbes Kerry is a former Secretary of State and five-term US Senator. Kerry is the author of Every Day Is Extra, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, The New War, and the best-selling This Moment on Earth. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow for Global Affairs at Yale University as well as the inaugural Visiting Distinguished Statesman for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, have two daughters, three sons, and seven grandchildren.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Chapter 1 Childhood 1

Chapter 2 Bright College Years 26

Chapter 3 Raising My Right Hand 42

Chapter 4 War 67

Chapter 5 The War at Home 110

Chapter 6 Finding My Way 132

Chapter 7 The Old Senate 149

Chapter 8 Holding Washington Accountable 182

Chapter 9 Making Peace 190

Chapter 10 A Time of Transition 202

Chapter 11 Cancer and Comebacks 250

Chapter 12 Within a Whisper 281

Chapter 13 Dusting Myself Off 330

Chapter 14 New President, Broken Senate 345

Chapter 15 Mr. Chairman 368

Chapter 16 Diplomacy in a Dangerous World 408

Chapter 17 Getting Caught Trying 440

Chapter 18 Preventing a War 485

Chapter 19 The Open Wound 524

Chapter 20 Protecting the Planet 556

Afterword 581

Acknowledgments 585

Index 591

Image Credits 623

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/13/2018
In this fine memoir, retired politician Kerry, descended from a wealthy Boston Brahmin family on his mother’s side, details a remarkable five-decade-long career in public service: decorated Vietnam veteran, antiwar leader, lieutenant governor and five-term senator from Massachusetts, 2004 presidential candidate, and secretary of state (2013–2017). He primarily discusses the joys and challenges of leadership roles in the political and diplomatic arenas; Kerry barely mentions his two marriages and two daughters, but recounts many close friendships, reflects on his political values, and writes movingly on issues of faith. He is particularly strong on the culture of the Senate, which “runs on relationships”—among those he befriended across the aisle was John McCain, who briefly considered joining him on the 2004 ticket—but lately has been corroded by the “spectacle and circus” of hyperpartisanship and showboating. Kerry also reveals his personable approach to diplomacy, as when he wooed China’s then–foreign minister Yang Jiechi at a restaurant overlooking Boston Harbor as part of a successful effort to obtain a U.S.-China agreement on emissions reductions. In recounting encounters with foreign leaders, he often takes the measured, understated, and sometimes euphemistic tone of the elder statesman, as when he describes incendiary remarks by Afghan president Hamid Karzai as “quite unhelpful.” This book reveals a man of quiet, passionate patriotism, immense intelligence, and thoughtfulness. Agent: Bob Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"The war hero, senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate has plenty to write about – and to be right about."

The Guardian (US)

"Every Day Is Extra offers a detailed record of an important life . . . it is frank, thoughtful and clearly written. . . . What lingers are not the parts but the whole; not the life, but the man. . . . A bittersweet reminder of what the country once demanded of its leaders.

The New York Times Book Review - Gideon Rose

In these pages Kerry shows remarkable honesty, depth, even spirituality. . . . There is remarkable poignancy — not the usual currency of the career politician and the country’s top diplomat.

The Boston Globe - David M. Shribman

"The strength of Kerry’s memoir is that it draws back the curtain on a life you thought you knew, but turns out to be a bit different. . . . A surprisingly personal book."

The Washington Post - David Ignatius

The difference between memoir and autobiography can be fuzzy, but Every Day Is Extra . . . has both the reflective candor of the former and the painstaking, chronological detail of the latter.

The New Yorker

2018-08-13

Diplomat, activist, and former presidential candidate Kerry (A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, 2003, etc.) recounts a long life of national service.

First came the Swift boat, then the swift boating. The author explains the title, in relation to his service in Vietnam, as "an expression of gratitude for survival where others did not make it." Of that experience, Kerry quietly notes, "I can't say it was a process devoid of moral hazards." Those hazards, in turn, prompted Kerry to turn against the war, running for Congress as an anti-war candidate even as he was still in uniform, helped along by an understanding admiral. The author evinces some bitterness on the whole matter of the war, and especially Robert McNamara, one of its architects, who "left the battlefield to slink off to the World Bank" and was never adequately called to task for his crimes. Kerry writes ably of the sausage-making aspects of politics, noting the importance of crossing the aisle to actually get things done, as when he and John McCain fought against bête noire Ted Sampley, "a self-appointed POW activist who sold T-shirts, flags, and newsletters on the Mall…[and who] profited grossly from the myth that prisoners were still being held in tiger cages in Vietnam." Sampley would return in the swift boating business that cost Kerry votes in the presidential run of 2004—but less so, the author suggests, than voter fraud in Ohio: "I wonder how many countries have elections in which machines are privately owned and controlled," he writes, "where the coding for tallying cannot be inspected or verified because it is ‘proprietary information.' " Given that such books often signal a political campaign in the offing, one wonders whether Kerry is contemplating another run for office—despite protestations to the contrary. Whatever the case, this memoir makes for fine reading for politics junkies, especially those with an interest in how policy is made.

Wonky, as befits the author, but a smart look at not just his life, but also our times.

Kirkus Reviews

"Kerry saw U.S. power much as he saw his own privilege: as a call to service. His memoir gives a comprehensive and, in places, moving account of his response to that call. People disagree over the wisdom and effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy in the Kerry years, but there can be no serious dispute about the integrity and patriotism that Kerry brought to the job."

Foreign Affairs

'The difference between memoir and autobiography can be fuzzy, but Every Day Is Extra . . . has both the reflective candor of the former and the painstaking, chronological detail of the latter.'

The New Yorker

'The war hero, senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate has plenty to write about – and to be right about.'

The Guardian