JFK Volume One 1917-1956 | ICN

JFK Quantity One 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall. Writer: Penguin Viking £30

Readers of ICN could really feel well-acquainted with the lifetime of President John F Kennedy. Nevertheless, a brand new biography provides a wealth of knowledge, due to not too long ago launched letters and paperwork. The younger man rising from Quantity One (650 pages, with out the top notes) is extra mental, well-travelled, considerate, gifted and braver than earlier biographies mirror. However he’s additionally a consumer of individuals (not simply ladies) who’s careless along with his buddies and his possessions, assured his wealth can simply change the costly watches or devoted cronies he casually loses alongside the best way.

Fredrik Logevall portrays an illiberal and snobbish Boston, the place JFK’s household have been by no means accepted due to their Catholicism. The e-book covers the Kennedy and Fitzgerald clans from their arrival within the USA till the second that JFK and his fearsome father, Joe, resolve he’ll run for president.

Joe vowed to make one million {dollars} earlier than he turned thirty-five, a purpose he simply achieved, due to insider buying and selling and disreputable inventory swindles. He raised his kids to all the time win, even when that meant dishonest.

“But he was dissatisfied,” Logevall writes. “Virtually each day, he obtained reminders that he and his household would by no means be absolutely accepted amongst ‘correct Bostonians’ – even when in materials phrases he had lengthy since left his patrician Harvard buddies in his wake. He noticed it within the remedy his boys obtained in school, within the obstacles that may hold his daughters from being invited to the fitting debutante events after they got here of age.” Joe exclaimed, “I used to be born right here. My kids have been born right here. What the hell do I’ve to do to be an American?”

His sons’ personal faculty was completely happy to take Joe’s donations, regardless of contemplating him a “Catholic climber” who did not know his place. Joe was additionally shut out of the honorary Harvard diploma he craved. But, his closeness to the church had compensations. When he went to Rome, Ambassador Kennedy (Roosevelt’s consultant in London within the Nineteen Thirties) had a entrance row seat for the coronation of Pius XII. Kennedy assumed, with out permission, that he might carry his ten sturdy household, taking the seats of the Italian international minister, Depend Ciano, and different dignitaries.

Joe’s conservative and pious spouse, Rose, has been caricatured as a saintly creature, silently enduring her husband’s fixed philandering. However right here, she is an clever girl who’s a much more succesful political organiser than Joe. All through her youth, Rose accompanied her politician father, Honey Fitz, to Boston occasions, and understood how the Democratic machine labored. Later in life, she rallied her daughters to supply a formidable assist group throughout JFK’s campaigns.

John Kennedy’s religion was held towards him from the second he entered the political fray, even in Boston, the place so many Irish Catholic immigrants had settled. At every stage of his profession, his advisors commissioned analysis to gauge what share of voters would resist supporting a Catholic candidate.

JFK had doubts, significantly when he was prevented from marrying a Protestant girlfriend: “The black and white world of his mom he might by no means recognise: he noticed too many shades of grey.” But, “Jack didn’t abandon his Christian religion or his Catholicism…he continued to attend Mass faithfully, and even within the White Home he acquired on his knees to hope earlier than mattress,” Logevall writes.

Some earlier biographies of Kennedy have instructed his heroism in the course of the Second World Conflict has been overblown. But, this isn’t supported by the information. When his patrol boat was sunk by the Japanese within the Pacific, he saved lives and supplied extraordinary management and braveness. When his first e-book, Why England Slept was revealed, and for years after, his opponents stated it had been ghost written. Logevall has seen the unique notes, and Kennedy’s dreadful spelling and grammar satisfied the biographer that it was all JFK’s work.

If there’s a fault, it’s the author’s naivety concerning the extent to which Joe Kennedy’s thousands and thousands ensured his bold kids have been untroubled by quotidian issues. JFK was a lazy pupil and made little effort as a consultant after which a senator. He was sloppy, realizing his employees might choose up the items he left in his wake. He spent an excessive amount of time vacationing in luxurious, and he was plainly spoilt. He labored arduous, nevertheless, when he had a purpose, corresponding to profitable an election or writing a e-book. He was additionally in astonishing ache for many of his life, affected by a disintegrating backbone, Addison’s illness, malaria and venereal illness. But, he by no means allowed his struggling to indicate in public, flashing his irresistible smile and radiating vitality.

He charmed virtually everybody he met (Eleanor Roosevelt was impervious), his biographer maintains, however he was distant, like his mom, and handled ladies appallingly. Nevertheless, he was additionally a deep thinker, intellectually curious, and cultured. He cherished spending time in British excessive society, however within the USA, he had employees and cronies, moderately than buddies.

Logevall describes the best way during which JFK used his father’s cash and connections to journey the world in a method no different future president might, giving him a sophistication about international coverage shared by few People then or since. We must always all be grateful he did, as a result of when JFK was examined, in the course of the Cuban Missile Disaster, he disregarded the recommendation of Chilly Warrior navy males and, arguably, saved the Western world from a nuclear holocaust.

Tags: Rebecca Tinsley, Fredrik Logevall, Kennedy, JFK, President Kennedy