Inga: Kennedy's Great Love, Hitler's Perfect Beauty, and J. Edgar Hoover's Prime Suspect

by Scott Farris Narrated by Scott Farris

Overview

In addition to her romance with Kennedy, Arvad married four times - including to an Egyptian prince, the brilliant filmmaker Paul Fejos, and the famed cowboy movie star Tim McCoy. She had affairs with Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, the noted surgeon Dr. William Cahan, and Winston Churchill's right hand man, Baron Robert Boothby. But by all accounts her admirers among the European and American elite loved Inga not for her physical beauty, but for her joie de vivre. She was a genius with people, she was daring and adventurous, and she was their equal. Like Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, and Clare Boothe Luce, Inga Arvad led a life that both sheds light on and defies the stereotypes of women of her time.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/24/2017
A mysterious woman who captivated powerful men gets a dramatic portrayal in this lively, sometimes swoony, biography. Journalist Farris (Kennedy and Reagan) details the picaresque life of Inga Arvad, a Danish-born pageant queen, actress, and journalist deemed “the most perfect example of Nordic beauty” by Adolf Hitler, who gave her exclusive interviews. When she moved to America in 1940, her Nazi associations sparked suspicions that she was a German spy and provoked a comic-opera FBI investigation with phone taps, bugs, and break-ins. Farris’s focus is the married Arvad’s months-long affair with young ensign John F. Kennedy. He portrays their relationship as sparking Kennedy’s presidential ambitions and then falling victim to them, as marriage to Protestant divorcée Arvad would have ruined his political career. Farris makes this a colorful, entertaining piece of Kennedy-clan gothic—the FBI recorded Inga and J.F.K.’s lovemaking; gruesome patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy manipulated everyone from offstage—but the romantic weight he accords it (J.F.K.’s “Inga Binga” was the only woman “worth the price of fidelity,” he writes) seems overstated: the “great love” feels like a mere hiccup in Kennedy’s history of callous womanizing, while the good-natured Arvad is overshadowed by more charismatic personalities around her. Photos. (Nov.)

Chris DeRose

Here is the incredible, never before told story of the blonde bombshell who won the hearts of John F. Kennedy and Adolf Hitler. Inga was among the most compelling people of the twentieth century. Scott Farris reveals the secrets she tried to take to her grave in a masterful, suspenseful book that reads like a spy thriller but is, in fact, all true. I could not stop turning pages until the end.

Kate Andersen Brower

Scott Farris pulls back the curtain on a fascinating era in American history and an intriguing woman who lived through it. Inga Arvad’s complexity is what makes the book so compelling. It seems she lived multiple lives and was part of the brightest and darkest moments in twentieth-century American history.

Nigel Hamilton

Scott Farris’s Inga is a jewel of a book—for Inga Arvad led a life that no novelist could have invented. Danish by birth, an immigrant American by choice, she bewitched men by her beauty, her journalistic flair, and that rarest of talents: to make others feel better about themselves than perhaps they had a right to. Inga’s extraordinary life story takes us across whole continents, featuring financiers, filmmakers, adventurers and politicians—including, most spectacularly, the young JFK. It is the stuff of legend—yet every word is true, told by a biographer of great sensitivity, narrative skill, and unremitting honesty.

Nathalia Holt

In this beautifully detailed biography, Scott Farris shines a light on the complex life of Inga Arvad, a woman who received admiration from Hitler and sincere love from JFK. With exhaustive research and a fast-paced narrative, Farris reminds us that Arvad was more than just a pretty face, but a woman of tremendous influence and ability, one whose story deserves to be told.

Liz Smith

[A] a revealing and startling new book.. .. a great read in this stressful election season.. .. Hollywood’s leading men were mad for Inga.. .. a notorious, fascinating, and unpredictable life!. .. it would make a fabulous movie.

Andrew Nagorski

Scott Farris has written a meticulously researched, scrupulously sensitive account of Inga Arvad’s truly remarkable odyssey and her genuine romance with the young John F. Kennedy. A page-turner par excellence, Inga disentangles fact from fiction about the woman who enchanted everyone from Hitler to Hollywood stars.

The Wall Street Journal

[Almost President is an] engaging study of men who came up short in the presidential arena but still had a significant effect on the life of the nation….

JANUARY 2017 - AudioFile

Danish journalist Inga Arvad is the complex woman who is purported to be the greatest love of JFK’s young adult life. She was also a special guest of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Inga was a gossip columnist who was suspected of being a Nazi spy. The countless Hitchcockian twists and turns of her story are articulately recounted, though the author’s narration leaves much to be desired. Farris takes a workmanlike approach. His delivery lacks any notable flair to engage listeners to follow the breakneck tour of Arvad’s life. Sadly, several French expressions are mangled in pronunciation. A little-known great beauty who led an intriguing life is brought to life— but without much listening appeal. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175606813
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	10/30/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos