True Compass is the posthumous memoir of United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy that was released September 14, 2009, by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group.

[3] It was written with the help of Pulitzer Prize-winning collaborator Ron Powers and was based on contemporaneous notes taken by Kennedy throughout his life, hours of recordings for an oral history project, and long interviews.

[1] A broader theme of the book is, in the words of The New York Times's Michiko Kakutani, "that persistence, perseverance and patience in pursuit of a cause or atonement for one’s failures can lead to achievement and the possibility of redemption.

[7] Jonathan Yardley for The Washington Post said that "Kennedy [seeks] to be modest about the successes in his long public life and honest about the failures" but that "like virtually all political autobiographies these days, it has the air of having been written by committee.

Mudd said there was no deceit about the purpose or context of the interviews, as Kennedy claimed in the book, and wrote that "I remain mystified, perplexed, angered, and saddened that the senator would have endorsed such a false account in what amounted to his last testament.

[3] However, a planned paperback edition was pushed back to 2011 due to the renewed vigor of the hardcover book's sales following a November 2009 appearance by widow Victoria Reggie Kennedy on The Oprah Winfrey Show.