Jfk biography logevall

One of the revelations about John F. Kennedy in Fredrik Logevall’s new biography, “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, ‒,” is that the man was an excellent letter-writer and diarist. The Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of history makes effective use of the collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, part of which has become available only recently.

“He always had a knack for the English language, even if he was an indifferent student in prep school and in his first years at Harvard,” Logevall says. “His teachers, frustrated by his lack of application overall, were always impressed by his way with words. It is an interesting contrast with his older brother, Joe Jr., the family’s supposed golden child, whose writings had a more dutiful, less imaginative quality.”

The first of a two-volume set, “JFK” aims to give the clearest picture yet available of the 35th president set against the historical, political, and cultural context of a pivotal age. The book begins with great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy’s arrival in Boston during the Irish potato famine and runs through Jack’s childhood, studies at Harvard, and military duty, and finally his rise in politics in , when he almost became the Democrats’ vice presidential pick. Logevall spoke with the Gazette recently about the man and the book.

Q&A

Fredrik Logevall

GAZETTE: There have certainly been many books written about JFK. What were you able to find that hadn’t been found before?

LOGEVALL: You’re quite right. There are a lot of excellent books out there on various aspects of his life and career, and especially the presidency — one thinks, for example, about the many studies of the Cuban missile crisis, Civil Rights, the Bay of Pigs disaster, the marriage with Jackie, and the assassination in Dallas. But we don’t have many true biographies, even one that is a full-scale examination of

ANEW YORK TIMESNOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR •A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president.

“An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century.”—Jill Lepore, author ofThese Truths: A History of the United States

WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE• NAMED BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR BYThe Times(London)

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:The Sunday Times(London),New Statesman,The Daily Telegraph, Kirkus Reviews

By the time of his assassination in , John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person.

Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK’s life—from birth through his decision to run for president—to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings, his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a mor

biography by Fredrik Logevall

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, (–) is a biography written by historian Fredrik Logevall. Published by Random House in September , the work examines the education, military service, and political career of an American president who had acquired a great deal of his knowledge of international relations in his early years. According to Logevall, it was Kennedy's knowledge of international relations gained in his youth that allowed him to steer the nation through the perilous deadlocks, short-term victories, and failures of the Cold War. These included his disastrous attempt to thwart Castro's communist takeover of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and the more positively received resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy's brief presidency was also noted for expediting the early stages of military détente with the Soviet Union by the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August and its enactment in October of that year. Logevall observed that Kennedy's awareness of the imperialistic nature of Russia during the Cold War and his wariness of the nature of communist expansionism later influenced his goals as president to keep America first in diplomacy, improve ties with foreign countries in the Americas, and to keep America first in scientific and military technology. This focus led Kennedy to later establish the Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress with Latin America, and the continua