JFK: Volume 2

Pulitzer-winning historian Fredrik Logevall’s masterly successor to his widely-acclaimed first volume depicts JFK’s trailblazing path to the White House – from facing dauntingly long odds to becoming the youngest president in American history. In the years since his victory, John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election success has become the stuff of legend. The road to the White House saw the first televised debates against Richard Nixon, concerns over the candidate’s Catholicism and relative inexperience, and, alongside his family, the creation of new forms of campaigning. But despite this mythology, his victory was never assured. In the second thrilling instalment of his JFK trilogy, Harvard professor Fredrik Logevall pulls back the curtain on one of the most consequential elections in American history – and the man behind it. From Kennedy’s star turn at the 1956 Democratic Convention to his inauguration in 1961, JFK: The Road to the White House is the story of a young politician and – in the first truly modern presidential campaign – a strategy that remade what a presidential candidate, and his campaign, could be. Logevall reveals Kennedy’s incredible drive to start earlier and work harder than his competitors, alongside his struggles: his troubled marriage, questions about winning over voters as a Catholic, and doubts about his forward-looking message. And with his historian’s eye, he paints a vivid picture of America — increasingly interconnected, the struggle for Black equality reaching a watershed moment, Communism seeming perilously close to home – while also showing how JFK took himself and his country on to the global stage. Deeply researched and highly immersive, this is a gripping behind-the-scenes history of the making of an American legend. It’s the clearest portrait we have of JFK as leader, orator, author, reader, husband, father, son – and future president.