The Patriarch

The Patriarch
Author: David Nasaw
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 914
Release: 2013-09-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0143124072

In this pioneering new work, celebrated historian David Nasaw examines the life of Joseph P. Kennedy, the founder of the twentieth century's most famous political dynasty. Drawing on never-before-published materials from archives on three continents and interviews with Kennedy family members and friends, Nasaw tells the story of a man who participated in the major events of his times: the booms and busts, the Depression and the New Deal, two world wars and the Cold War, and the birth of the New Frontier. In studying Kennedy's life, we relive the history of the American century. "Riveting . . . The Patriarch is a book hard to put down . . . As his son indelibly put it some months before his father was struck down: 'Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your county.' One wonders what was going through the mind of the patriarch, sitting a few feet away listening to that soaring sentiment as a fourth-generation Kennedy became president of the United States. After coming to know him over the course of this brilliant, compelling book, the reader might suspect that he was thinking he had done more than enough for his country. But the gods would demand even more." - New York Times Book Review

Joseph P. Kennedy Presents

Joseph P. Kennedy Presents
Author: Cari Beauchamp
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2009-02-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307271293

Joseph P. Kennedy’s reputation as a savvy businessman, diplomat, and sly political patriarch is well-documented. But his years as a Hollywood mogul have never been fully explored until now. In Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, Cari Beauchamp brilliantly explores this unknown chapter in Kennedy’s biography. Between 1926 and 1930, Kennedy positioned himself as a major Hollywood player. In two short years, he was running three studios simultaneously and then, in a bold move, he merged his studios with David Sarnoff to form the legendary RKO Studio. Beauchamp also tells the story of Kennedy’s affair with Gloria Swanson; how he masterminded the mergers that created the blueprint for contemporary Hollywood; and made the fortune that became the foundation of his empire.

Quodlibet

Quodlibet
Author: John Pendleton Kennedy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1840
Genre: American fiction
ISBN:

Hostage to Fortune

Hostage to Fortune
Author: Joseph Patrick Kennedy
Publisher: Viking Adult
Total Pages: 824
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Memorial: Edward J. Essey Sr.

The Founding Father

The Founding Father
Author: Richard J. Whalen
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Total Pages: 580
Release: 1964
Genre: Ambassadors
ISBN:

"An NAL-World book." Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 489-[526]).

JFK

JFK
Author: Fredrik Logevall
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 817
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 081299714X

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president. “An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE • NAMED BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR BY The Times (London) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Sunday Times (London), New Statesman, The Daily Telegraph, Kirkus Reviews By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person. Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK’s life—from birth through his decision to run for president—to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings, his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we’ve previously known, whose distinct international sensibility would prepare him to enter national politics at a critical moment in modern U.S. history. Along the way, Logevall tells the parallel story of America’s midcentury rise. As Kennedy comes of age, we see the charged debate between isolationists and interventionists in the years before Pearl Harbor; the tumult of the Second World War, through which the United States emerged as a global colossus; the outbreak and spread of the Cold War; the domestic politics of anti-Communism and the attendant scourge of McCarthyism; the growth of television’s influence on politics; and more. JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 is a sweeping history of the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as well as the clearest portrait we have of this enigmatic American icon.

Why England Slept

Why England Slept
Author: John F. Kennedy
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1440849900

Originally published in 1940, Why England Slept was written by then-Harvard student and future American president John F. Kennedy. It was Kennedy's senior thesis that analyzed the tremendous miscalculations of the British leaders in facing Germany on the advent of World War II, and in doing so, also addressed the challenges that democracies face when confronted directly with fascist states. In Why England Slept, at the book's core, John F. Kennedy asks: Why was England so poorly prepared for the war? He provides a comprehensive analysis of the tremendous miscalculations of the British leadership when it came to dealing with Germany and leads readers into considering other questions: Was the poor state of the British army the reason Chamberlain capitulated at Munich, or were there other, less-obvious elements at work that allowed this to happen? Kennedy also looks at similarities to America's position of unpreparedness and makes astute observations about the implications involved. This re-publication of the classic book contains excerpts from the foreword to the 1940 original edition by Henry R. Luce, an American magazine magnate during that era; the foreword to the 1961 edition, also written by Luce; and a new foreword by Stephen C. Schlesinger, written in 2015.