JFK VOLUME 1: 1917-1956
FREDRIK LOGEVALL Viking, 816pp, £30, ebook £12.99
‘It is the singular achievement of this magnificent new biography of John Fitzgerald Kennedy that it has taken one of the most scrutinised lives of the 20th century and made it feel fresh.’ So wrote Duncan White in the
Daily Telegraph. Logevall ‘scrapes away the encrusted layers of myth, rumour and cliché’, he continued, and ‘the result is a generous portrait of the young Kennedy, one that is attentive to his contradictions and weaknesses even as it seeks to understand what it was that made him so extraordinary’. What makes it such a ‘superior biography’, White concluded, is Harvard historian Logevall’s ‘sense of the larger stakes’. He has ‘the biographer’s ability to pick out the details that shaped the man, but also the historian’s drive to explain why Kennedy so captured and shaped the American postwar moment’.
In his review for the Spectator, Andrew Preston considered it ‘a testament to Logevall’s talents as a writer and historian that he’s able to demystify JFK the legend but keep John F Kennedy the person interesting. He allows us to delve into the world of the Kennedy family and be swept along by the story without getting carried away by the myth. Logevall is an elegant stylist, and although he’s in no hurry to get us to the White House, his book never feels slow. JFK is biography at its very best, with Logevall acting as an expert guide without getting in the reader’s way... Such are Logevall’s storytelling powers that, even though we all know the outcome, it still feels like a cliffhanger.’
‘Logevall scrapes away the encrusted layers of myth, rumour and cliché’