JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956

For Fredrik Logevall, this book emerged from a paradox. On the one hand, the life and death of John F. Kennedy forms an extraordinary American story. On the other hand, although we have innumerable books on aspects of that saga, there exists virtually no full-scale biography. Nor has anyone fully examined Kennedy in the context of his time and place. Logevall set out to produce such a work. By situating JFK within the wider setting of the era and the world, he argues, we can better comprehend not only his rise, but his country’s rise, and can come to see how much Kennedy’s life story tracks with key facets of America’s political and geopolitical story in the middle decades of the 20th century.

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and Professor of History at Harvard University. His book Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House, 2012), won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize, among other prizes. His other recent works include America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (with Campbell Craig; rev. ed., Belknap/Harvard, 2020). Logevall’s essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, Daily Beast, and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. A native of Stockholm, Sweden, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Commentator:
- Barbara A. Perry

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University and the National History Center) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partners (the George Washington University History Department and the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest) for their continued support.

[Grisostomo]

I'm reading this biography of JFK right now. It is slow going for me but it does give a full bodied presentation of the man himself. He was personally rather lazy being the product of an extremely wealthy and powerful family. His mother was the daughter of a prominent Boston politician and his father was a financial genius. He had a sharp mind, , was witty and was a voracious reader with a very sophisticated view of international politics. His father was an ambassador to the court of St James and so young Jack had a front row seat to the most pressing issues of European politics. He was a very lucky young man who loved politics and had access to some of the most intriguing and powerful people of the first half of the twentieth century.
The one thing that stands out to me about Jack Kennedy is that family loyalty is very important. I was worried that this would be another authorized biography of a Kennedy that would be fawning. It's not. He is presented as what he was; a frankly spoiled brat who got into the best prep schools and then easily got into Princeton University as a freshman and then transferred to Harvard College as a sophomore due to his families money and connections.

His later mantra that he gave in his inaugural address "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" was the one that he and his brothers lived by.