Jack Kennedy

The making of a president

Barbara Leaming

Barbara Leaming's groundbreaking biography of the most charismatic of all twentieth-century American presidents reveals Britain's profound, lifelong impact on John F. Kennedy. In British history, literature and values, the young Jack Kennedy discovered an image of the man he wanted to be, and he spent much of his life struggling to become that man.

Drawing on extensive new and astonishingly intimate primary materials and original interviews, for the first time a Kennedy biographer succeeds in finding the dramatic line that runs through Kennedy's complicated life, the trajectory of the friendships and forces that led to the White House and shaped his actions there.

Here is the childhood reading of a sickly boy; Jack's rapturous engagement at the age of fifteen with the writings of Winston Churchill; and his transforming experiences as a member of the Second Sons' Club of young aristocrats in pre-war London, where his father was the American ambassador and where his sister introduced him to a group of friends who would have a deep and lasting influence on Jack. Post-war we witness his difficult political metamorphosis during the 1950s; his campaign for the White House "on the Churchill ticket"; and the dramatic thousand days of the presidency as Kennedy moved to resolve the conflicts of a lifetime. As never before, we get a vivid, remarkably detailed picture of the intellectual and political formation of America's thirty-fifth president.

Brilliantly researched, compellingly told, Jack Kennedy: The Making of a President is a colourful and tumultuous narrative of friendships and family, tragedy and triumph; a biography that will radically alter our understanding of both the man and his presidency.