KENNEDY, John F. Profiles in Courage: Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americans. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1961.
8vo. Publisher's blue leather, gilt Presidential Seal to bottom right corner of front, gilt lettering to spine, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt, blue silk bookmark, in original blue box; pp. xix, [iii], 266, dedication leaf; with 8 pages of black and white illustrations;
Inaugural edition to commemorate Kennedy's election as president. This deluxe version was intended for donors to the Democratic Party, signed in secretarial hand to the dedication leaf. The space for the dedicatee's name has been left blank.
Also included is a John F. Kennedy funeral card (12 x 8.5 cm), with a photographic portrait of the president to the front and an extract from his inaugural address to the reverse.
This is a collection of short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States Senators. Kennedy had long been interested in the topic of political courage, beginning with his senior thesis at Harvard, later published as Why England Slept, which dissected the failure of British political leaders in the 1930s to oppose popular resistance to re-arming, thereby leaving the country ill-prepared for World War II When he took a leave of absence from the Senate in 1954 to recover from back surgery, it was to the study the topic of political courage that he dedicated his time. The result was this work featuring characters including John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, and Daniel Webster. The book earned him the Pulitzer Prize and enhanced his electoral campaign. When he became president in 1961 it seemed only right to mark the occasion with a special reprint of his esteemed work. This did slightly gloss over the fact that, although Kennedy was the book's guiding spirit and chief architect, much of it was ghost-written by his speechwriter Ted Sorenson while the senator recuperated from his surgery.
SKU: 2124457