[1] She was a long time professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Hunter College in New York City until she left to devote herself to writing full-time.
Christopher Hitchens declared in The Atlantic Monthly: "The great merit of Barbara Leaming's new book is to demonstrate how dependent the young Kennedy became upon a charmed circle of British noblemen, and also how obsessed he became with the need to match himself with that greatest of Anglo-American aristocrats, Winston Churchill.
"[12] In the London Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Silvester wrote of Leaming's JFK book, "No previous biographer has focused so sharply on Kennedy's attempts to apply Churchillian thought during his years in the White House.
Writing in Finest Hour: The Journal of Winston Churchill, Richard M. Langworth said, "Leaming's insight is extraordinary.
The Boston Globe review commented that the book, "provides suggestive evidence that her subject suffered from the clinical symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.