The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy


Larry J. Sabato - 2013
    Kennedy died almost half a century ago-yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato-himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency-explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors. A recent Gallup poll gave JFK the highest job approval rating of any of those successors, and millions remain captivated by his one thousand days in the White House. For all of them, and for those who feel he would not be judged so highly if he hadn't died tragically in office, The Kennedy Half-Century will be particularly revealing. Sabato reexamines JFK's assassination using heretofore unseen information to which he has had unique access, then documents the extraordinary effect the assassination has had on Americans of every modern generation through the most extensive survey ever undertaken on the public's view of a historical figure. The full and fascinating results, gathered by the accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, paint a compelling portrait of the country a half-century after the epochal killing. Just as significantly, Sabato shows how JFK's presidency has strongly influenced the policies and decisions-often in surprising ways-of every president since. Among the hundreds of books devoted to JFK, The Kennedy Half-Century stands apart for its rich insight and original perspective. Anyone who reads it will appreciate in new ways the profound impact JFK's short presidency has had on our national psyche.

Rose Kennedy's Family Album: From the Fitzgerald Kennedy Private Collection, 1878-1946


Caroline Kennedy - 2013
    Kennedy's centennial, celebrate the life and legacy of the 35th President of the United States. A selection of more than 300 images--including family letters, personal ephemera, and captivating photographs--collected by Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, many never seen before, featuring the beloved and revered Kennedy family: This remarkable history dates from 1878 through 1946--up to the aftermath of WWII and the beginning of JFK's political career--and covers everything from the family's first home to beach vacations, from children's birthdays to first Communions. The images capture the formative years of a uniquely American dynasty, imparting a glowing nostalgia to the period and detailing the family's progress as it grows from a pair of turn-of-the-century newlyweds into a populous, vibrant clan of hopeful young men and women on the brink of their brilliant destinies. This is a piece of Americana that readers will treasure.

The Killing of a President: The Complete Photographic Record of the JFK Assassination


Robert J. Groden - 1993
    Kennedy remains the greatest unsolved mystery in American political history. Though hundreds of books have been written on this topic, an in-depth photographic analysis has never before been published. In this compelling new book, The Killing of a President: The Complete Photographic Record of the JFK Assassination, the Conspiracy, and the Cover-up, readers can examine a comprehensive collection of all the latest research and relevant evidence in the Kennedy case. This authoritative volume contains more than 650 photographs, maps, drawings, and documents that depict and explain the events surrounding the assassination and the cover-up, including a complete analysis of the medical, ballistics, and acoustics evidence; the story of Lee Harvey Oswald; new information on the "grassy knoll" controversy; the Warren Commission proceedings; the details of Jim Garrison's investigation; and a discussion of the House Assassination Committee hearings in the late 1970s. Many of the book's photographs, documents, and data have never before been published because of their suppression by the government or their previous unavailability. The images have been carefully reproduced and many have been optically enhanced by using the latest technology to clarify heretofore unseen detail in the photographs. This step-by-step chronology and comprehensive visual analysis form a revealing case study for anyone interested in the JFK assassination. The publication of The Killing of a President is certain to be unsettling and controversial because it permits the public an unencumbered view of the photographic evidence. While some of the photographs in this book are shocking and disturbing, their appearance here is crucial to showing that a conspiracy did exist to kill John Kennedy. The Killing of a President is a powerful and important book that attempts to unlock the secrets of the conspiracy - one that the American government has supported for the last thirty y

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House


Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. - 1965
    Kennedy and his administration. Handpicked by Kennedy to serve as special assistant to the president, historian and Harvard professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. witnessed firsthand the politics and personalities that influenced some of the most important and dramatic events in modern history. The hundreds of photographs and documents included here have been gleaned from such sources as the John F. Kennedy Library, the Library of Congress, the Associated Press, Life magazine, and more. The photos capture private meetings with the president, the Bay of Pigs, the Civil Rights movement, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as official White House memoranda, public speeches, social occasions, and private moments with the Kennedy family. These powerful images add a new dimension to the award-winning text and introduce a new generation to some of the most important and visually iconic moments in our recent past.

Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film


Alexandra Zapruder - 2016
    Abraham Zapruder didn't know when he ran home to grab his 8mm camera on November 22, 1963 that this single spontaneous decision would change his family's life for generations to come. Originally intended as a home movie of President Kennedy's motorcade, Zapruder's film of the JFK assassination is now shown in every American history class, included in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit questions, and referenced in novels and films. It is the most famous example of citizen journalism, a precursor to the iconic images of our time, such as the Challenger explosion, the Rodney King beating, and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. But few know the complicated legacy of the film itself. Now Abraham's granddaughter, Alexandra Zapruder, is ready to tell the complete story for the first time. With the help of the Zapruder family's exclusive records, memories, and documents, Zapruder tracks the film's torturous journey through history, all while American society undergoes its own transformation, and a new media-driven consumer culture challenges traditional ideas of privacy, ownership, journalism, and knowledge. Part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder demonstrates how one man's unwitting moment in the spotlight shifted the way politics, culture, and media intersect, bringing about the larger social questions that define our age.

The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga


Doris Kearns Goodwin - 1987
    Drawing on unprecedented access to the family and its private papers, Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling historian Doris Kearns Goodwin takes readers from John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald's baptism in 1863 through his reign as mayor of Boston, to the inauguration of his grandson as president ninety-eight years later. Each character emerges unforgettably: the young, shrewdly political Rose Fitzgerald; her powerful, manipulative husband, Joseph P. Kennedy; and the "Golden Trio" of Kennedy children -- Joe Jr., Kathleen, and Jack -- whose promise was eclipsed by the family's legacy of tragedy. Through the prism of two self-made families, Goodwin reveals the ambitions and the hopes that form the fabric of the American nation.

Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon


Larry Tye - 2016
    Kennedy as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight. But Kennedy—nurtured on the rightist orthodoxies of his dynasty-building father—started his public life as counsel to the left-baiting, table-thumping Senator Joseph McCarthy.A bare-knuckled political operative who masterminded his brother’s whatever-it-takes bids for senator and president, Kennedy okayed FBI wiretaps of Martin Luther King Jr. and cloak-and-dagger operations against communist Cuba that included blowing up railroad bridges, sabotaging crops, and plotting the elimination of President Fidel Castro.Remembered now as a rare optimist in an age of political cynicism, RFK’s profoundly moving journey from cold warrior to hot-blooded liberal also offers a lens into two of the most chaotic and confounding decades of twentieth century America.

Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot


J. Randy Taraborrelli - 2000
    Ethel Skakel. Joan Bennett. Three women who married into America's royal family and became forever linked in legend. Set against the panorama of explosive American history, this unique story offers a rarely-seen look at the relationship shared among the three women -- during the Camelot years and beyond. Whether dealing with their husbands' blatant infidelities, stumping for their many political campaigns, touring the world to promote their family's legacy, raising their children, or confronting death, the Kennedy wives did it all with grace, style and dignity.

JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and The Emergence of a Great President


Thurston Clarke - 2013
    Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke argues that the heart of that legend is what might have been. As we approach the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, JFK’s Last Hundred Days reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of great change, finally on the cusp of making good on his extraordinary promise.Kennedy’s last hundred days began just after the death of two-day-old Patrick Kennedy, and during this time, the president made strides in the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam, and his personal life. While Jackie was recuperating, the premature infant and his father were flown to Boston for Patrick’s treatment. Kennedy was holding his son’s hand when Patrick died on August 9, 1963. The loss of his son convinced Kennedy to work harder as a husband and father, and there is ample evidence that he suspended his notorious philandering during these last months of his life.Also in these months Kennedy finally came to view civil rights as a moral as well as a political issue, and after the March on Washington, he appreciated the power of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for the first time.Though he is often depicted as a devout cold warrior, Kennedy pushed through his proudest legislative achievement in this period, the Limited Test Ban Treaty. This success, combined with his warming relations with Nikita Khrushchev in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, led to a détente that British foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas- Home hailed as the “beginning of the end of the Cold War.”Throughout his presidency, Kennedy challenged demands from his advisers and the Pentagon to escalate America’s involvement in Vietnam. Kennedy began a reappraisal in the last hundred days that would have led to the withdrawal of all sixteen thousand U.S. militaryadvisers by 1965.JFK’s Last Hundred Days is a gripping account that weaves together Kennedy’s public and private lives, explains why the grief following his assassination has endured so long, and solves the most tantalizing Kennedy mystery of all—not killed him but who he was when he was killed, and where he would have led us.

Robert Kennedy: His Life


Evan Thomas - 2000
    . . saw suffering and tried to heal it." And "Bad Bobby," the ruthless and manipulative bully of countless conspiracy theories. Thomas's unvarnished but sympathetic and fair-minded portrayal is packed with new details about Kennedy's early life and his behind-the-scenes machinations, including new revelations about the 1960 and 1968 presidential campaigns, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his long struggles with J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson.

Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath


Mimi Alford - 2010
    She'd attended the same exclusive girls' school as Jackie Bouvier, now installed in the White House as the first lady. Which is also where Mimi found herself, as an 18-year-old intern. JFK's White House was a place for which she wasn't remotely prepared, dominated by the charismatic & sexually rapacious figure of the president. Within four days, they'd started a relationship. There are several extraordinary things about Mimi's story. One is that she'd evaded notice from any of the biographers of JFK & other chroniclers of the heady days & sexual shenanigans of Camelot. Only by chance did a reporter in 2006 follow up a mention of her name in a JFK book, & doorstep her--a married NY grandmother--to find out whether she was the Mimi Beardsely mentioned in a passing reference. This is all the more surprising given the length of the affair--18 months--& the fact that it was ended only by his death. Mimi Beardsley Alford has decided, after decades of silence & reflection, to tell her story. This is not just a memoir of a young woman of her generation & class coming of age in the 60s, & her relationship with JFK. She also examines the significance it had in her life & relationships since, why she chose to be silent for so long & why she feels this is the time to speak out.

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis


Robert F. Kennedy - 1968
    Kennedy. In this unique account, he describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. In a new foreword, the distinguished historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., discusses the book's enduring importance, and the significance of new information about the crisis that has come to light, especially from the Soviet Union.

Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination


Josiah Thompson - 1967
    Using eye- and ear-witness testimony, drawings made from stills of the Zapruder film (which may have been tampered with but is NOT a fabrication!), and expert analysis, Josiah Thompson's SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS remains the best study of the assassination--and the best proof of a conspiracy--to have emerged from the 60s, or any other decade for that matter.By Rocco Dormarunno on August 20, 2004

Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero


Chris Matthews - 2011
    With the verve of a novelist, Chris Matthews gives us just that. We see this most beloved president in the company of friends. We see and feel him close-up, having fun and giving off that restlessness of his. We watch him navigate his life from privileged, rebellious youth to gutsy American president. We witness his bravery in war and selfless rescue of his PT boat crew. We watch JFK as a young politician learning to play hardball and watch him grow into the leader who averts a nuclear war.What was he like, this person whose own wife called him “that elusive, unforgettable man”? The Jack Kennedy you discover here wanted never to be alone, never to be bored. He loved courage, hated war, lived each day as if it were his last.Chris Matthews’s extraordinary biography is based on personal interviews with those closest to JFK, oral histories by top political aide Kenneth O’Donnell and others, documents from his years as a student at Choate, and notes from Jacqueline Kennedy’s first interview after Dallas. You’ll learn the origins of his inaugural call to “Ask what you can do for your country.” You’ll discover his role in the genesis of the Peace Corps, his stand on civil rights, his push to put a man on the moon, his ban on nuclear arms testing. You’ll get, more than ever before, to the root of the man, including the unsettling aspects of his personal life. As Matthews writes, “I found a fighting prince never free of pain, never far from trouble, never accepting the world he found, never wanting to be his father’s son. He was a far greater hero than he ever wished us to know.”

Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis


Paul Muolo - 2008
    On average, fifty lenders a month were going bust-and the people responsible for the crisis included not just unregulated loan brokers and con artists, but also investment bankers and home loan institutions traditionally perceived as completely trustworthy.Chain of Blame chronicles this incredible disaster, with a specific focus on the players who participated in such a fundamentally flawed fiasco. In it, authors Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla reveal the truth behind how this crisis occurred, including what individuals and institutions were doing during this critical time, and who is ultimately responsible for what happened.Discusses the latest revelations in the housing and mortgage crisis, including the SEC's charging of Angelo Mozilo Two well-regarded financial journalists familiar with the events that have taken place chronicle the crisis in detail, showing what happened as well as what lies ahead Discusses how the world's largest investment banks, homeowners, lenders, credit rating agencies, underwriters, and investors all became entangled in the subprime mess Intriguing and informative, Chain of Blame is a compelling story of greed and avarice, one in which many are responsible, but few are willing to admit their mistakes.