although 40,000 books have been published on the kennedys, by jill abramson’s estimate, there are few serious efforts, prior to hers, to comprehensively analyze the life and times of jfk, the famous 35th president of the united states united.
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There are many books, as you say, that deal with aspects of his presidency and his family. But we don’t have many full biographies of jfk himself, which contextualize his life and pay due attention to his formative years. I don’t know if I have a good explanation why. but it made me think there was an opening here. he had written about kennedy before in different contexts, mostly related to the cold war and vietnam. Since the materials available at the Kennedy Library and elsewhere are so rich, I thought I was in a good position to fill the gap in a real life and time biography.
You are reading: Books on john f.kennedy
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America in Vietnam, his 2012 story of America’s involvement in Vietnam, won the Pulitzer Prize and Frances Parkman. is writing about vietnam what brought you to jfk?
up to a point, yes. Coincidentally, I opened fires of war by writing about JFK when he visited China in 1951. I also wrote about Kennedy before, in other articles and other books, and have taught about the Kennedy years in my classes. so, I was already familiar with and interested in him and his time.
Tell me about jfk, the man, and your book about him, the first volume of your planned two-part biography, which I asked you to discuss as one of the five books you’ve named.
kennedy is undoubtedly an iconic figure of the 20th century; he is also a very important figure, I would say, especially in American history, but in fact in international history. His life, from 1917 to 1963, was an extraordinary period in world history and in the history of the United States.
hence the reason it became a two-volume work. In volume one, he covers his life up to 1956, when he was elected to the Senate, and also tells a second story about the rise of the United States to great power status and then superpower status. That second story, notable in its own right, relates to Kennedy’s life. That is, you can better understand some of the pivotal developments of the mid-20th century through the lens of life at JFK. Thus, the debate in the United States between the so-called isolationists and interventionists prior to the entry of the United States into the Second World War; the second world war itself; the origins of the cold war; The Beginnings of the Civil Rights Struggle and McCarthyism: I think all of these important developments and controversies in the middle decades of the 20th century are illuminated when viewed through the prism of Kennedy’s life.
It’s hard for me to imagine that people don’t know the basic facts of jfk life, but because we have an international audience, can you convey what’s most important for people to understand about the man who became the thirty-fifth president of the united states?
we must understand that he lived an extraordinary half century and that he came of age during the second world war. moreover, he was one of nine children, in a family that became fabulously wealthy. As a result, Jack Kennedy did not suffer during the Great Depression in the way that many others did. he grew up as a privileged young man.
“kennedy wrote wonderful diaries”
but he also had intense challenges throughout his life. he was sickly from an early age to the end, and he lost the brothers closest to him in age. his older brother died in the second world war. Kathleen (or Kick), her older sister and the closest sister she was to in many ways, died in a plane crash in 1948. And she did indeed lose her sister Rosemary to a botched lobotomy in 1941. Thus, she had to overcome a lot of fragility and tragedy.
Finally, we should note that he served with distinction in the South Pacific during World War II and began his meteoric rise in politics shortly thereafter. He won his first election to the House of Representatives, from Massachusetts’s 11th district, when he was not yet 30.
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Going back to the books you selected, I thought the place to start was Prelude to Leadership: The Postwar Diary of John F. kennedy.
kennedy kept wonderful diaries, which are quite helpful from a biographer’s perspective, at various times in his life, particularly while travelling. This book, edited by Deirdre Henderson, is composed of what he wrote while touring Europe in 1945, just after the Germans surrendered and just before the Japanese sued for peace. There is a foreword by Hugh Sidney, the journalist, who knew Kennedy quite well. The book is fascinating because it is a window into the thoughts of a young Kennedy, recently discharged from the Navy, as he closely watched the destruction wrought by World War II in Europe and interacted with many high-powered people. he is clearly fascinated by politics and international relations.
How do you think his familiarity with the horrors of war as a reporter and as a Marine influenced his views?
when he wrote these diaries, only a year and a half had passed since he had returned from his own service in the pacific theater. he is clearly skeptical about the wisdom of using military power to solve political problems. that is something that appears in the newspapers. At the same time, he makes clear his conviction that the United States must play a leading role in the new international system emerging from the rubble of war. Kennedy is convinced, as he travels in these intervening months of 1945, that the United States has new responsibilities in the global arena, but that it cannot do it alone; it must work in concert with other nations. he endorses the concept of collective security.
His book begins by detailing Kennedy’s travels in Europe before the war, which would not have been possible without the extraordinary wealth and position of his father, who was ambassador to the United Kingdom on the eve of World War II.
there’s no doubt that joe kennedy helped pave the way for jfk, his second son. Through his wealth and his connections, he made it possible for Jack to undertake these journeys both before and after World War II, which was very important to JFK’s maturation as a thinker and his emergence as a political leader. as you say, i open my book with his travels through europe in 1939. and although now, in 1945, he emerges from the shadow of his father, it would have been very difficult to undertake these trips, perhaps impossible, without the help of the old man .
kennedy has two things in common with the 45th president of the united states. Both he and Trump were sons of extreme fortune and both were second sons whose older brothers were long thought to be heirs-apparent.
it is true that trump and jfk were second sons who lost their older brothers. both were born to privilege and wealth. and it can be said that there is one more thing they had in common, they were both children of very dominant parents.
but you can also point out the profound differences. From a very young age, John F. Kennedy was intensely interested in history, interested in international affairs, and interested in other countries. he was open to other cultures, understood conflicting views of national interest, and was comfortable with complexity. As I say in the book, Kennedy, even as a young man, treated serious things seriously and thought long and hard about the problems of world affairs and the challenges of democratic leadership. he always put a premium on reasoning from evidence. the same could hardly be said for trump.
profiles in courage is your next recommendation. Of the books written by jfk, this is the most familiar to readers, but may still be unfamiliar to some, so tell us about it.
This book is about us senators throughout the nation’s history who, in his view, had taken principled stands, even at the risk of hurting their political interests by going against the wishes of their constituents or region of. it is a book that he published in 1956, as an American. senator who was beginning to think about a run for the white house, but it deals with problems and enigmas that had fascinated him since his student days. his senior thesis at harvard, which became his first book, why england slept, is about the development of british appeasement policy in the 1930s. but in a broader sense it is about the dilemmas of leadership in democracies in times of crisis, and in this way it is a kind of profiling prequel.
“He is clearly skeptical about the wisdom of using military power to solve political problems”
The central question in courage profiles is: when and under what circumstances should politicians try to go beyond their own self-interest and consider what is best for the nation? when should politicians defy the wishes of their constituents, their party, or their region to take political positions they believe are in the nation’s interest? The book investigates why certain senators took such positions in the United States. history, how they did it and what we can learn from them. In this way, I would say that it is a timeless book that still resonates with us today, almost seven decades after its publication.
There is controversy over whether Kennedy wrote the book himself. my conclusion is that his role was crucial. His assistant, Ted Sorensen, wrote the case studies that make up half the book, with the help of Jules David, a Georgetown academic. But Kennedy was responsible for the overall themes and plot, as set forth in the introduction and conclusion, the most important parts of the book, both then and today. Long before he met Sorensen, he was fascinated by the concept of political courage and had honed his views on it.
You’ve named a book by Sorensen as the next on your list of books to read about jfk. Before I talk about that, I wanted to ask you if you think Kennedy can be seen as “a figure of courage” for whatever stance he took during his time in the Senate.
I think so. for example, to take a rather esoteric subject, there is his stance in favor of the san lorenzo seaway, even though powerful interests in massachusetts were against it and even though the allies warned kennedy that he might be committing political suicide by support her. She was in favor of the seaway because she thought it was in the interest of the nation and, ultimately, of Massachusetts as well.
On the other hand, it wasn’t always a “profile of courage”. The prominent example is the controversy over Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism. In the minds of many, myself included, he was overly cautious in his response to McCarthy’s demagoguery against the Reds, too reticent to condemn it, even if his position made political sense at the time: McCarthy had broad support among irish catholic voters in massachusetts, and jfk did not wish to alienate them. also a factor in his thinking: his father, joe kennedy, was close to mccarthy, as was jfk’s brother, robert.
turning to the book by your assistant and speechwriter, theodore sorensen, please tell me about the counselor.
counselor is the memoir of ted sorensen, who joined the jfk staff in early 1953, just as jfk was entering the senate. He quickly became Kennedy’s top aide, a distinction he arguably held to the last, in November 1963. I submit that it was one of the most remarkable partnerships in American political history, as the two men collaborated closely on speeches, articles, as well as on policy issues. I suggest we can think of them as songwriters and lyricists, like the Rodgers (JFK) and Hart (Sorensen) of American politics.
Sorensen is truly a rare creature in Washington. he is someone who helps devise the gist of political positions and then can translate those positions into elegant, concise prose. it is not so common that one person can perform both functions. sorensen did. This book, Counselor, which he wrote towards the end of his life, provides insight into this extraordinary partnership and what made it work so well. Although Sorensen would have a long and productive career after Kennedy’s death, his name would be forever associated with JFK.
the back cover of this book characterizes sorensen as kennedy’s closest adviser, i assume that whoever wrote that is not taking into account robert kennedy, his younger brother, who was his attorney general during his presidency. To what extent was Kennedy’s presidency a partnership between brothers?
to a great extent, it certainly was. once we get to the presidency, there could be a pretty interesting discussion about who mattered more, on a day-to-day basis, bobby kennedy or sorensen. but the truth is that both are vital. Kennedy depended on both. For the crucial political decisions facing JFK as president, Bobby was often in the room when Ted Sorensen was not. That suggests that, as time went on, Bobby’s influence grew. but sorensen also remained vital.
Last on your list of books to read about jfk is a title that is so familiar in the American political and historical lexicon that it has become a meme. tell me about david halberstam, the best and the brightest.
halberstam was a reporter for the new york times, one of the first members of the american press to report in depth from vietnam itself. He arrived in South Vietnam in mid-1962, at the height of the Kennedy administration. Initially, he believed in the cause, he believed it was important for the United States to help the South Vietnamese prevail against the insurgency. over time, he began to doubt this belief. As problems plagued the war effort, he reported the deed, much to the chagrin of the White House, including Kennedy himself. that’s the background.
It is an extensive and fascinating work. It belongs on any short shelf of essential books on the Vietnam War. Halberstam looks at the Kennedy years and the Johnson years and asks: what led the so-called “best and brightest”, referred to in the somewhat tongue-in-cheek title, to wage this full-scale war in Vietnam? ? Halberstam doesn’t do everything right. for example, in my opinion, he exaggerates the amount of arrogance in American decision-making in these years; My research and that of others indicates that we officials were more pessimistic, more grimly realistic, than Halberstam lets on. still, the best and the brightest is altogether an extraordinary work: vivid, incisive, fascinating. reading it as a student convinced me to go to graduate school and become a historian.
The most common ‘counterfactual’ question of the 20th century, along perhaps with, what if hitler had never been born, is without a doubt, what if kennedy hadn’t been shot? Many argue that the so-called “Americanization” in Vietnam would not have happened, while others insist that it did. Are you hypothesizing what might have been a thought experiment that historians should be involved in?
I think they should. I am one of those historians who believes that asking “what if” questions, whatever fascination they may have, has historical utility. we can better understand what happened in history if we consider what could have happened, if we consider the plausible unrealized alternatives. I have written on the question of what might have happened in Vietnam if Kennedy had lived, if Lyndon Johnson remained Vice President and Kennedy had to make decisions about sending more troops in 1964-65 when South Vietnam was on the brink. of defeat I’ll consider it again as I research and write volume 2.
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