BEFORE HE WAS PRESIDENT, JFK WAS A BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND WON A PULITZER PRIZE

Most remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy as our youthful and inspiring 35th President who, with his elegant wife, turned the White House into Camelot until his assassination in November 1963. But what few today recall is that long before his presidency, JFK was a well-respected author and even won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1957 with Profiles in Courage.

Born into a wealthy and powerful family, Kennedy’s father had been the Ambassador to the UK in the years leading up to World War II. Kennedy joined his father in Europe in 1938 and 1939, and witnessed first-hand Great Britain’s failed policy of appeasement. Sent home shortly after Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Kennedy turned his experience into his graduate thesis. Retooled as a book, 1940’s Why England Slept became a bestseller.

In subsequent years, Kennedy became a naval officer and war hero. In 1946, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and in 1952, the Senate. While in the latter, and recovering from a back operation in 1956, he researched and wrote Profiles in Courage.

Discussing the difficulty of maintaining political integrity in the face of party, personal and constituent pressures, Profiles in Courage, and its message of the need for politicians to strike a balance between conflicting interests in order to effectively govern, remains relevant today:

""The fanatics and extremists and even those conscientiously devoted to hard and fast principles are always disappointed at the failure of their Government to rush to implement all of their principles and to denounce those of their opponents. But the legislator has some responsibility to conciliate those opposing forces within his state and party and to represent them in the larger clash of interests on the national level; and he alone knows that there are few if any issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels are on one side"".

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/before-he-was-president-jfk-was-a-bestselling-author-and-won-a-pulitzer-prize/