JFK

An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century. With JFK, Fredrik Logevall has re-invented the genre of presidential biography, casting new light on the man and, far more profoundly, on the times. A brisk, authoritative, and candid biography, and a wonderfully compelling history of America's heady and troubled mid-century rise

Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

Our best Vietnam War historian now turns to another subject you thought you already knew, and he makes JFK as alive and compelling as if you were reading about him for the first time.Fredrik Logevall portrays the young Kennedy with the masterful intimacy and sympathy that only a great scholar and writer could achieve

George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

John F. Kennedy was a man before he was a monument, and among the great achievements of this wonderful book is how brilliantly Fredrik Logevall conveys both JFK's humanity and the history of the age.With precision and with grace, Logevall has given us a memorable portrait of a man and of the world that, before he shaped it, shaped him. A powerful, provocative, and above all compelling book

Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author of The Soul of America

In this magisterial biography, Fredrik Logevall has deftly peeled away the many layers of myth surrounding John F. Kennedy to reveal a complex and surprisingly vulnerable human being. This first installment of his Kennedy biography is also the story of the rise of the United States to world power in a turbulent age. It's an essential read for anyone interested in the life and the times

Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us

Fredrik Logevall's brilliant biography rescues JFK from the myths that have long surrounded his early life without in any way obscuring the complexities of his character. There could be no more poignant reminder of what we were-far too soon-to lose

John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University

In his utterly absorbing JFK, Fred Logevall reconstructs not only a great man, but also his entire age. The author's sense of place and context merits comparison with Robert Caro

Brendan Simms, author of Hitler: A Global Biography

In this first volume of Fredrik Logevall's definitive biography, JFK is all too engagingly and amiably human... I hope Logevall's second volume will follow soon...it is bound to be enthralling.

Peter Conrad, Book of the Week

Riveting... superb

David Runciman, The Guardian

The most compelling biography I have read in years...There has been a host of JFK biographies, but this one excels for its narrative drive, fine judgments and meticulous research...makes the story seem a cliffhanger even though we know what is coming

Max Hastings, Sunday Times

An extraordinarily rich picture that fills in all kinds of background to the life

James Naughtie

JFK is biography at its very best... Such are Logevall's storytelling powers that, even though we all know the outcome, it still feels like a cliffhanger

Andrew Preston, The Spectator

Other authors [...] have ably chronicled this epic saga, but none has told the tale of the 35th president's formative years better or more thoroughly than the Harvard history professor Fredrik Logevall . . . A fastidiously diligent researcher . . . richly detailed and instructive . . . Logevall artfully melds the biographical and historical approaches

David M. Kennedy, The New York Times

Excellent...shaping up to be the definitive account of JFK's life....Logevall has taken a familiar story and retold it in a way that is captivating and persuasive, as the tale of triumphant emergence from war and the tragedy of an immigrant family

Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, Book of the Week

It is the singular achievement of this magnificent new biography of John Fitzgerald Kennedy that it has taken one of the most scrutinised lives of the 20th century and made it feel fresh. Harvard historian Fredrik Logevall scrapes away the encrusted layers of myth, rumour and cliché

Duncan White, The Telegraph

Superb. Why should you read the umpteenth book about the most famous of Kennedys? The short answer is that Logevall's book is smart and very readable. Logevall has a gifted historian's grasp of the times as well as the life of JFK. This reader had trouble putting it down

Evan Thomas, Washington Post

It is as good as anything that has been published about its subject, based on years toiling in the archives but written with a delightfully light touch... At times it reads more like a novel than a biography, so vivid is the prose and so extraordinary the material... JFK reminds readers of what America once was -- and could be again

The Economist

Few books came as larded with praise as Fredrik Logevall's book about the early years of JFK. It's a magisterial achievement, following the oversexed super-ambitious young Kennedy into wartime adventures and forbidden love affairs with Swedish spies. Crucially, it shows the formation of the character of one of the most important 20th-century politicians

James Marriott, Sunday Times Books of the Year

The archival work is superb

Telegraph Books of the Year

Professor Logevall's research is prodigious and his writing both elegant and persuasive; above all, however, his objectivity will serve as a model for historians seeking to achieve the still elusive goal of coming to grips with John F. Kennedy - "without tears." The only drawback for scholars and general readers will be the wait for volume 2

Sheldon M. Stern, History News Network

Even the most devout JFK aficionado will feel they have read their first biography after completing Logevall's [book]

New York Law Journal

High-octane historical biography, placing a major subject in a new and arresting light

Roy Foster, author of 'W. B. Yeats, A Life'