Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman

Fülszöveg

JACK KENNEDY
Four decades after the death of John F. Kennedy, Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman calls into question much of what we think we know and understand about America's thirty-fifth president. In this groundbreaking biography, Barbara Leaming paints a startlingly originál portrait of one of the most famous figures of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive new primary materials and interviews, Leaming reveals for the first time what Kennedy himself saw as the aims and aspirations of his life and presidency.
At the heart of this revelatory look at Kennedy's life is Leamings account of the dramatic process by which Kennedy—torn between loyalty to the ideas and values of a father he revered and those of that father's longtime adversary—came to be shaped by the speeches and writings of Winston Churchill. It has long been known that Kennedy admired Churchill, but Leaming is the first histórián to document the crucial influence of Churchill's ideas on Kennedy. At... Tovább

Fülszöveg

JACK KENNEDY
Four decades after the death of John F. Kennedy, Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman calls into question much of what we think we know and understand about America's thirty-fifth president. In this groundbreaking biography, Barbara Leaming paints a startlingly originál portrait of one of the most famous figures of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive new primary materials and interviews, Leaming reveals for the first time what Kennedy himself saw as the aims and aspirations of his life and presidency.
At the heart of this revelatory look at Kennedy's life is Leamings account of the dramatic process by which Kennedy—torn between loyalty to the ideas and values of a father he revered and those of that father's longtime adversary—came to be shaped by the speeches and writings of Winston Churchill. It has long been known that Kennedy admired Churchill, but Leaming is the first histórián to document the crucial influence of Churchill's ideas on Kennedy. At his presidential inauguration on January 20, 1961, Kennedy moved to do nothing less than to take up Churchill's mantle in the postwar world. In this book we see Kennedy emerge as a man still deeply at odds with himself, yet determined to win his place in history by doing what Churchill had been unable to do: put into practice the strategy that the aged prime minister had conceived to avoid a third world war and to begin the peaceful defeat of Communism.
For the first time a Kennedy biographer succeeds in finding the dramatic line that runs through the full continuum of Kennedys complicated life, the trajectory of the friendships and forces that led to the White House and shaped his actions there. From the childhood reading of a sickly boy to Kennedy's engagement at age fifteen with the writings of Churchill, his transforming experiences as a member of the Second Sons Club of young aristocrats in prewar London, his difficult political metamorphosis during the 1950s, and his campaign for the U.S. presidency "on the Churchill ticket," we get as never before a vivid, remarkably detailed picture of the intellectual and political formation of the man who would be president. In a colorful and tumultuous narrative of friendships and family, tragedy and triumph, we finally come to know the man Kennedy wanted to be and to understand his long, priváté struggle to become that man.
Brilliandy researched, compellingly told, Jack Kennedy: The Education ofa Statesman is a biography that will radically altér our understanding of both the man and his presidency. It alsó adds a surprising final chapter to the saga of Winston Churchill.

Author of the critícally acdaimed Orsón Wellesand the New York Times bestseller Katharine Hepbum, Barbara Leaming has written for Vanity Fair and the New York Times Magaziné. She lives in Connecticut. Vissza