Thurston Clarke, “JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President”

Thurston Clarke, “JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President”

John F. Kennedy remains one of the most remembered and most enigmatic presidents in American history, perhaps precisely because, as Thurston Clarke writes in the preface of his new biography JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, he was “more than most presidents– more than most middle aged men… a work in progress.” This is perhaps also why he’s a perennial favorite of biographers: because he proves such a challenge to pin down and because it is so very tempting to try to imagine who he might have become had he lived. Alas, he didn’t. And so we’re left to wonder, a temptation Clarke resists in JFK’s Last Hundred Days. Instead, he mines that period to see who JFK was then and leaves us to the imagining. For, undoubtedly, he was a changed man in many respects: grieving the death of his infant son, somewhat renewed in his commitment to his wife, moving towards a policy of détente with Russia, re-examining American involvement in Vietnam. Clarke borrows from the journalist Laura Bergquist the idea of JFK as our most “prismatic” president, and systematically examines the various facets that were presented in his final hundred days. The end result is a portrayal that, while doing nothing to quell the unanswerable question of who JFK might have become had he not died, does go a long way towards answering the question of who he was while he lived. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(2051)

Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026). In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames ...

6 Syys 42min

Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Leah Kim about her powerful book, Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026). A deeply per...

5 Syys 1h 21min

Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)

Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for insp...

5 Syys 51min

Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home

Filmmaker Peter Santenello on Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home

Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat deep in the Louisiana bayou? Peter Santen...

2 Syys 1h 3min

Muy Lang Lim, "In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge: A Child Survivor's Memoir" (NUS Press, 2026)

Muy Lang Lim, "In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge: A Child Survivor's Memoir" (NUS Press, 2026)

As a child, Lim Muy Lang grew up in a prosperous Sino-Khmer family in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, her family, al...

1 Syys 46min

David Keohan, "The Wind Beneath the Stone: My Quest to Unearth a Piece of Ireland's Folklore" (Bloomsbury and Chelsea Green, 2026)

David Keohan, "The Wind Beneath the Stone: My Quest to Unearth a Piece of Ireland's Folklore" (Bloomsbury and Chelsea Green, 2026)

When world kettle-bell lifting champion David Keohan heard the old tales of stone-lifting, he was captivated, setting off on a quest to rediscover these famous stones and attempt the feats of heroe...

1 Syys 24min

Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Robyn Hitchcock's second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books, 2026), explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative outp...

26 Elo 42min

Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

Brian Jay Jones, "George Lucas: A Life" (Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

The essential biography of the influential and beloved filmmaker George Lucas. On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two Americ...

26 Elo 1h 16min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

i-dont-like-mondays
olipa-kerran-otsikko
hupiklubi
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
download
uutiscast
sita
poks
seitseman
antin-palautepalvelu
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
kaksi-aitia
rss-murhan-anatomia
kolme-kaannekohtaa
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
mamma-mia
ihme-ja-kumma
aikalisa
loukussa
mystista