Jack Kennedy; The Education of a Statesman

New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Fair. 509, [3] pages. DJ has some wear and soiling, and a small portion mission especially at the rear. Signed and dated on the title page by the author: Barbara Leaming, May 31, 2006. Includes Epilogue, Acknowledgments, Source Notes, and Index. Also includes 18 chapters, and 54 black and white photographs of Jack Kennedy and his family. Ephemera from a book signing is laid inside the front cover. Barbara Leaming is an American biographer, whose subjects have included Roman Polanski, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She was a long time professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at Hunter College in New York City until she left to devote herself to writing full-time.[2] Her articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine. In 2006 Leaming turned from the film world to the world of politics and history with her biography Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman. Christopher Hitchens declared in The Atlantic Monthly: "The great merit of Barbara Leaming's new book is to demonstrate how dependent the young Kennedy became upon a charmed circle of British noblemen, and also how obsessed he became with the need to match himself with that greatest of Anglo-American aristocrats, Winston Churchill." In the London Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Silvester wrote of Leaming's JFK book, "No previous biographer has focused so sharply on Kennedy's attempts to apply Churchillian thought during his years in the White House. ' Drawing on extensive new primary materials and interviews, Barbara Leaming reveals for the first time what Kennedy himself saw as the aims and aspirations of his life and presidency. Leaming is the first historian to document the crucial influence of Churchill's ideas on Kennedy. Derived from a Kirkus review: Leaming had previously concentrated on the life of Jackie. Now she turns her attention to her celebrated husband's life. We learn that when JFK realized that he could not supplant older brother Joe as the apple of his father's eye, he determined to become the exact opposite, a slacker and slob. The descent didn't last long, thanks in part to the influence of sister Kathleen, who died early-but not before Jack "had finally emerged as the man she had always insisted he could be." Whereas many biographies of JFK are devoted to his playboy ways and alleged fondness for the easy life, Leaming demonstrates that he had toughness and resolve matched by a good mind. When he decided to reform himself in prep school, JFK daily dissected the New York Times, memorized every detail and constructed counterarguments to every statement. That was the habit of mind that JFK had learned it from a father figure, Winston Churchill, who exerted both metaphysical and actual influence over the Kennedy White House. Leaming is particularly effective at showing how Kennedy's admiration for Churchill led to his consistent anticommunism. Thoroughly well written and constructed, with fresh views on the Kennedy presidency and the difficult path that led to Camelot.