(FORTUNE Magazine) – Most accounts of the life and death of John F. Kennedy fall into two equally useless categories -- hatchet job or warm, wet kiss. To that extent, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (Simon & Schuster, $30) fills a void. Written by veteran journalist Richard Reeves, it is a richly detailed and objective account of the man and his presidency. Historians and collectors of Kennediana have reason to smile. But armchair voyeurs be warned: Reeves downplays J.F.K.'s well-documented zipper problem, merely noting that in addition to Marilyn Monroe and Mafia princess Judith Campbell, dozens of women -- typists, reporters, friends of friends, first-time acquaintances -- were routinely given a chance to relieve the presidential tensions. ''If I don't have a woman every three days or so, I get a terrible headache,'' J.F.K. tells a bemused Harold Macmillan at one point. Readers looking for a management lesson or two will also be disappointed. After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy centralized decision-making and froze out all but a few loyalists. His grasp of economics was shaky at best, and he expressed a keen contempt for those involved in petty commerce. ''What makes a businessman tick?'' he asks during a dustup with U.S. Steel. ''God, I hate the bastards.'' Above all, Reeves fails to overcome his greatest challenge: telling us much new about events already so well explored -- the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Cold War posturing with Khrushchev, the Diem affair in Vietnam. Only when he takes on the Cuban missile crisis does his pace quicken. Of course, for truly gripping narrative, a close call with nuclear annihilation works every time.