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

JFK Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Fredrik LogevallBy Clark G. Ross, Frontis Johnston Professor of Economics, Davidson College, December 2020Having taught U.S. economic and political history to curious, intelligent college students for over forty-years, I have a pretty good sense of that bibliography which will most interest them and benefit them as students. To a list of four seminal works, I am delighted to add as a fifth work, the first volume of Fredrik Logevall’s new biography of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: JFK Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall.This volume joins other great works: David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest (1972) that chronicles our post-World War II struggle with communism and its leading us to Vietnam; David Kennedy’s Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945 (1999) which provides an extraordinary explanation of the Great Depression, its causes and its remedies. Let us also add economist’s Robert Gordon’s work with its excellent economic analysis, supplemented by major social insights, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (2016), and finally Isabel Wilkerson her new book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents (2020), a volume that well articulates our land’s 400-year-old struggle with race and social status, generally. The reader of these works will be far along in understanding the history of the United States. Each of these five books is meticulously researched and provides that level of detail that is needed to understand fully the subject being treated.Logevall’s work is the only work listed as a biography. An excellent biography it is of JFK with his personal and intellectual development superbly analyzed in this first volume. Yet, the work is a true example of intellectual writing and learning at its best. From the personal insights into JFK’s development: intellectually, personally, and politically, Logevall hits on all the salient points, both effectively affirming and refuting some conventional thoughts—like the role of family and its influence, with both his father Joseph and his older brother Joseph. Logevall writes so clearly and convincingly that you sense he is in the room with JFK and reporting JFK’s candid responses to his probing questions.The author supports his cogent depiction of JFK with superb analysis of key international events and the role they played in JFK’s development. From i) contrasting the thoughts and the years of Chamberlain and Churchill and the origins of World War II, to ii) the post-World War II debates relating to the interactions of FDR, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin that characterized international tensions from 1945 to at least 1990, to iii) Congressman JFK’s 1951 visit to Vietnam and encounter and discussions with the French military commander, the esteemed General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, to iv) the nuances of dealing with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin in the 1950s, the reader is treated to a richness of historical insight. Logevall’s ability to combine events, interpersonal engagements, and personality dispositions is commendable and leads to a superb portrait of not only JFK, but of the world, both domestically and internationally, in which he lived.I commend Logevall’s biography of JFK to you. I feel that his work ranks with those fine other books as a milestone in shedding light on the United States, on our world, and the origins of those challenges that we continue to face today. This superb book, like the others, will well surpass the challenges of time. Be an “early reader” and then like me, await eagerly volume 2 from 1956-57 onwards.

I mostly enjoyed the history of scorn for the Irish Catholic in America and the rise of Joe Kennedy Sr. He became a major Hitler appeasement/stay out of overseas wars strategist his son Jack was brave enough to ideologically break away from. Not sure I wanted to go through the history of the 20th century--Hitler, Korea, Viet Nam--please save it for another book.In this very thorough rise of a star tome we meet the entire Kennedy clan, their wives, their close associates. This kind of work should appeal more to academic completists. Too Harvard.The author covers most of the “like father/like son” promiscuous playboy life styles of Joe Sr and Jack, but this is frustratingly all surface. We can assume they are all raving beauties, but doesn’t anybody ever get knocked up? Have abortions? Disappear mysteriously? No irate husbands? Public scandal? Blackmail? How can one be such a sexual athlete with such a bad back?JFK was a man in terrible health. If you want a profile in courage, the man battled debilitating ailments that had him in agonizing pain all his life and on a deathbed many times.“X-rays showed that his fifth lumbar vertebra had collapsed, probably on account of the corticosteroids he was taking for his Addison’s Disease.”

"JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956" is the first volume in a projected 2-volume biography of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This is the first definitive biography to be written about JFK for many years. What's more: it's very much a solid, readable, well-crafted and researched book that gives the reader a deep sense of JFK himself and the factors that contributed to his personal growth and political career from his birth in May 1917 to 1956, when he emerged from the Democratic National Convention that summer as a major national, political figure -- someone to be watched, with future prospects for higher office.

This is a beautifully written, meticulously researched, and even-handed biography of John F. Kennedy. This volume covers his birth and concludes with his election to the U.S. Senate. The author is currently working on volume two, which I am eagerly anticipating because this first volume was absolutely enthralling. The portrait of the young JFK that emerges is thorough and fascinating, as is the in-depth picture of the entire Kennedy family. History shaped the family, and vice versa. The book fully fleshes out JFK’s youth and the development of his keen intellect and talents. Never having known much of JFK’s earlier life, I tended to believe the rather common assumption that he was uninterested in politics until the death of his older brother, Joe P. Kennedy, Jr., and that his father, Joe Sr., seized upon his second son as a “replacement” and future presidential aspirant. This book clearly demonstrates that this was not at all the case. JFK developed his intellect and knowledge of history and politics himself, and was a more independent thinker than his older brother had ever been. I could go on and on. Take my word for it - this book is essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century American political history.

Fantastic read. Hard to put down, can't wait for volume II.

The author writes in prose that is never dull and is always honest and objective. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this biography and am looking forward to the 2nd volume.

Excellent book... so much so that, when I finished reading it, so wished it continued on...

A beautifully written biography

Bought this book in late 2022. Started it recently. Forty pages are missing due to a misprint that replaces that material with sections of the bibliography and index. Very disappointed in Random House. And, since I waited too long to start reading it, the book is not returnable.