JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956

For Fredrik Logevall, this book emerged from a paradox. On the one hand, the life and death of John F. Kennedy forms an extraordinary American story. On the other hand, although we have innumerable books on aspects of that saga, there exists virtually no full-scale biography. Nor has anyone fully examined Kennedy in the context of his time and place. Logevall set out to produce such a work. By situating JFK within the wider setting of the era and the world, he argues, we can  better comprehend not only his rise, but his country’s rise, and can come to see how much Kennedy’s life story tracks with key facets of America’s political and geopolitical story in the middle decades of the 20th century.

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and Professor of History at Harvard University. His book Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House, 2012), won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize, among other prizes. His other recent works include America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (with Campbell Craig; rev. ed., Belknap/Harvard, 2020). Logevall’s essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, Daily Beast, and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. A native of Stockholm, Sweden, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University and the National History Center) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partners (the George Washington University History Department and the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest) for their continued support.