JFK: Path to the Presidency, 1956-1961

A brilliant young presidential candidate revolutionizes American politics in this landmark volume of Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Fredrik Logevall’s JFK trilogy—a masterful account of Kennedy’s rise in the first truly modern campaign and a case study in the consolidation of power.

In the years since his victory, John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election win has become the stuff of American legend. The defining elements of this campaign are widely remembered: the first televised debates against Richard Nixon, national anxieties over the Cold War, concerns over the candidate’s Catholicism and relative inexperience, and the Kennedy clan joining Jack on the campaign trail. But Kennedy’s victory was never assured, nor was he as infallible as the mythical retellings lead us to believe.

In the second installment of his award-winning JFK trilogy, Pulitzer Prize winner Fredrik Logevall pulls back the curtain, unearthing the vital saga buried beneath one of the most consequential elections in American history—and the man behind it. Starting with Kennedy’s star turn at the 1956 Democratic Convention and ending with his inauguration in 1961, JFK: The Path to the Presidency, 1956-1961 is the story of a young politician and his trailblazing strategy that remade what a presidential candidate, and his campaign, could be.

Logevall reveals Kennedy’s incredible drive to start earlier and work harder than his competitors, but also his struggles during this pivotal period: his troubled marriage, questions about how to win over voters as a Catholic, and doubts about his forward-looking message. And with his historian’s eye, Logevall places Kennedy in the cultural milieu of America in the late 1950s—increasingly suburban and interconnected, the struggle for racial equality reaching a watershed moment, Communism now perilously close to home.

Deeply researched yet vibrantly novelistic, JFK is a propulsive, behind-the-scenes history of the making of an American legend, and a portrait of a man—and country—discovering the importance of meeting challenges head on, without fear or hesitation.