Andrew Preston

The magic of JFK remains undimmed

Fredrik Logevall conveys the full force of Kennedy’s charisma in the first volume of what looks set to be a definitive biography

JFK waving to the crowds. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 12 September 2020

It’s easy to forget that John F. Kennedy lived such a short life. At 43, he was the second youngest president in history; when he died, he was younger than Barack Obama was in 2009. Kennedy’s presidency was brief —‘a thousand days,’ as the historian and Kennedy confidant Arthur Schlesinger Jr memorably put it — but included some of the most intensively covered episodes in modern history, from the civil rights movement to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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