Introduction
President John F. Kennedy was in office from 1961-1963, until he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His 1000 days presidency has left a mystique and legacy in the country. His term was left unfinished full of hope and promise.
In the 1960 Presidential election, Kennedy defeated Vice-President Richard Nixon in a very narrow victory. Kennedy became the 35th President, but also the first Roman Catholic to hold the highest position in the country.
His foreign policy focused on the Cold War, and lead the country through several crises including the Bay of Pigs, which was a failure and success in sparing the country from a nuclear confrontation with the the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, Kennedy also increased American military involvement in Vietnam, thus first escalating the troops in South Vietnam. Kennedy had wanted to take out the American military presence in Vietnam after the 1964 election. However, with assassination it is not certain he would committed to this policy.
In domestic policy affairs he endorsed major civil rights legislation at the urging of his brother Robert, the attorney general of the U.S. President Kennedy signed executive orders ending segregation in federal housing and mandating affirmative action in government agencies. Other domestic initiatives to fight poverty, improve public education and medical care for the elderly were not enacted by the time of his death.
The books included in this bibliography consists primarily of biographies of Kennedy’s life and Presidency. However, there are some titles that focus exclusively on his presidency. There are some book listed that discuss the assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Bibliography: President John F. Kennedy
Bernstein, Irving. Promises kept : John F. Kennedy’s new frontier. New York : Oxford University Press, 1991. 342 p.
Bishop, Jim. The day Kennedy was shot. New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1968. 713 p.
Bishop, Jim. A day in the life of President Kennedy. New York, Random House, 1964. 108 p.
Beschloss, Michael R. The crisis years : Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963. New York, NY : Edward Burlingame Books, 1st ed., 1991. 816 p.
Bradlee, Benjamin C. and John F. Kennedy. Conversations with Kennedy. New York : Norton, 1975. 251 p.
Burner, David. John F. Kennedy and a new generation. Boston : Little, Brown, c1988. 189 p.
Dallek, Robert. An unfinished life : John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. Boston : Little, Brown, and Co., 1st ed., 2003. 838 p.
Galbraith, John Kenneth. Ambassador’s journal; a personal account of the Kennedy years. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1969. 656 p.
Hilsman, Roger. To move a nation; the politics of foreign policy in the administration of John F. Kennedy. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1st ed., 1967.
Kennedy, John F. Profiles in courage. New York, Harper & Row, [Memorial ed.] 1964. 287 p.
Kennedy, Robert F.; Edwin O. Guthman, and Jeffrey Shulman. Robert Kennedy, in his own words : the unpublished recollections of the Kennedy years. Toronto ; New York : Bantam, 1988. 493 p.
Leamer, Laurence. The Kennedy men : 1901-1963 : the laws of the father. New York : Wm. Morrow, 1st ed., 2001. 882 p.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald’s tale : an American mystery. New York : Random House, 1st trade ed., 1995. 791 p.
Manchester, William Raymond. The death of a President, November 20-November 25, 1963. New York, Harper and Row, 1967. 710 p.
Manchester, William Raymond. One brief shining moment : remembering Kennedy. Boston : Little, Brown,1st ed., 1983. 280 p.
Martin, Ralph G. A hero for our time : an intimate story of the Kennedy years. New York : Macmillan, 1983. 596 p.
May, Ernest R. and Philip Zelikow. The Kennedy tapes : inside the White House during the Cuban missile crisis. Cambridge, Mass : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997. 728 p.
Posner, Gerald L. Case closed : Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK. New York : Random House, 1st ed., 1993. 607 p.
Reeves, Richard. resident Kennedy : profile of powerP. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1993. 798 p.
Reeves, Thomas C. A question of character : a life of John F. Kennedy. New York : Free Press ; Toronto : Collier Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991. 510 p.
Salinger, Pierre. With Kennedy. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, [1st ed.], 1966. 391 p.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. New York, Harper and Row, [1st ed.], 1965. 783 p.
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier. A thousand days; John F. Kennedy in the White House. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1965. 1087 p.
United States. Warren Commission. Report of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., [1st ed.], 1964. 726 p.
Weisbrot, Robert. Maximum danger : Kennedy, the missiles, and the crisis of American confidence. Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, 2001. 275 p.
White, Theodore Harold. The making of the President, 1960. New York, Atheneum Publishers, [1st ed.], 1961. 400 p.
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The Sixties: A Journey Through Politics and Culture.
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