The definitive biography of JFK, from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fredrik Logevall
The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's much-garlanded masterpiece: 'The most compelling biography I have read in years' Max Hastings
By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen. Born in 1917 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 modern history.
Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Harvard professor Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade combing through material unseen or unused by previous biographers, searching for and piecing together the 'real' John F. Kennedy -- resulting in a masterpiece that reviews have agreed will be the definitive work. This first volume of this sweeping two-part biography spans the first thirty-nine years of his life, revealing his early relationships, his formative and heroic experiences during World War II, and his deeply fascinating romance with Jackie Kennedy. In examining these pre-White House years, Logevall chronicles Kennedy's extraordinary life and times with authority and novelistic sensibility, putting the reader in every room where it happened. This landmark work offers the clearest portrait we have of a remarkable figure who still inspires individuals around the world.
About the Author
Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School and Professor of History at Harvard University. A specialist on US foreign relations history and modern international history, he was previously the Anbinder Professor of History at Cornell University. Before that he taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he co-founded the Center for Cold War Studies. Logevall is the author or editor of ten books, including Embers of War, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2013 Francis Parkman Prize, as well as the 2013 American Library in Paris Book Award and the 2013 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Industry Reviews
The most compelling biography I have read in years...There has been a host of JFK biographies, but this one excels for its narrative drive, fine judgments and meticulous research...makes the story seem a cliffhanger even though we know what is coming
Max Hastings * Sunday Times *
Excellent...shaping up to be the definitive account of JFK's life....Logevall has taken a familiar story and retold it in a way that is captivating and persuasive, as the tale of triumphant emergence from war and the tragedy of an immigrant family
Daniel Finkelstein * The Times, Book of the Week *
In this magisterial biography, Fredrik Logevall has deftly peeled away the many layers of myth surrounding John F. Kennedy to reveal a complex and surprisingly vulnerable human being. This first installment of his Kennedy biography is also the story of the rise of the United States to world power in a turbulent age. It's an essential read for anyone interested in the life and the times
Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us
Our best Vietnam War historian now turns to another subject you thought you already knew, and he makes JFK as alive and compelling as if you were reading about him for the first time.Fredrik Logevall portrays the young Kennedy with the masterful intimacy and sympathy that only a great scholar and writer could achieve
George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
Fredrik Logevall's brilliant biography rescues JFK from the myths that have long surrounded his early life without in any way obscuring the complexities of his character. There could be no more poignant reminder of what we were-far too soon-to lose
John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University
An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century. With JFK, Fredrik Logevall has re-invented the genre of presidential biography, casting new light on the man and, far more profoundly, on the times. A brisk, authoritative, and candid biography, and a wonderfully compelling history of America's heady and troubled mid-century rise
Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States
