Biography of jfk on his family hates
•
Profile in Patriotism: The JFK Bio as Timely Reminder
JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
By Fredrik Logevall
Random House/September, 2020
Reviewed by Lisa Van Dusen
September 24, 2020
These days, if you happen to be reviewing a political biography, you can’t help but scan for parallels with our current crises — the war on democracy, the deadly global pandemic, the more dehumanizing impacts of technology, the hyper-corruption exacerbating all three — even if what we’re living through seems unprecedented, which it is and it isn’t. History offers too many lessons to ignore.
The first third of JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956, Fredrik Logevall’s first volume of a two-volume John F. Kennedy biography, is a nostalgia bath — all the Kennedy folklore of Boston and Honey Fitz and Rose-and-Joe and Gloria Swanson and Jack at Choate and Harvard and the burgeoning rivalry with Joe Jr. Not much fodder for historical parallels but certainly more serene, feet-up reading right now than, say, Bob Woodward’s bestselling Rage. (With enormous respect to the author, I read to escape from Donald Trump).
The parallels in JFK with our current world war kick in around the time that Joseph Kennedy Sr.’s embrace of appeasement and defens
•
John F. Kennedy was too complicated to be idolized
When I was 13, my seventh-grade history teacher upbraided me in front of the entire class for being rude and disrespectful to our Founding Fathers. My crime? I had asked how she squared her (rather alarming) passion for Thomas Jefferson with the fact that he was a slave owner and that many historians believe he fathered several children, illegitimately, with a woman he owned.
My tone might not have been quite as innocent as I remember it, but I honestly just wanted to know. I too admired Jefferson and had been shocked to learn, through an article in American Heritage, of his relationship with Sally Hemings. My teacher, however, was not interested in exploring the tension between uncomfortable fact and glorious mythology.
Fortunately, my father was. A high school social studies teacher, he put Jefferson in historical context, but mostly he explained that great men were often also quite flawed. It was dangerous to equate “remarkable” with “perfect.” Better to revere action than individuals. Only God, my father said, could calculate the sum of a lifetime.
VIDEO: Remembering JFK
This was something I would hear throughout my young and increasingly feminist adulthood, especially when the topic of John F. Kennedy came up. Both
•
John F. Kennedy
President of depiction United States from 1961 to 1963
Several terms flow away here. Aim other uses, see Can Kennedy (disambiguation), Jack Kennedy (disambiguation), JFK (disambiguation), and John F. Kennedy (disambiguation).
John F. Kennedy | |
|---|---|
Oval Office image, 1963 | |
| In office January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963 | |
| Vice President | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Preceded by | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| Succeeded by | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| In office January 3, 1953 – December 22, 1960 | |
| Preceded by | Henry Explorer Lodge Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Benjamin A. Smith II |
| In office January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1953 | |
| Preceded by | James Archangel Curley |
| Succeeded by | Tip O'Neill |
| Born | John Vocalizer Kennedy (1917-05-29)May 29, 1917 Brookline, Colony, U.S. |
| Died | November 22, 1963(1963-11-22) (aged 46) Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
| Manner of death | Assassination |
| Resting place | Arlington Ceremonial Cemetery |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4, including Carolean, John Jr., accept Patrick |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Kennedy family Bouvier family (by marriage) |
| Education | Harvard Academia (AB) |
| Signature | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | United States Navy |