"Catching the Wind" is the first volume of Neal Gabler’s two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy. Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father’s fortune and his brothers’ coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy presented by Gabler is one the public seldom saw. He entered the Senate with his colleagues’ lowest expectations, a show horse, not a workhorse, but he used his “ninth-child’s talent” of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator. Following the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, he was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission. BPL President David Leonard moderates this program as part of the [**Arc of History: Contested Perspectives**](https://forum-network.org/series/history-talks-boston-public-library/) series. This conversation is part of the esteemed Lowell Lecture Series at the Boston Public library.