Events

'JFK: Coming of age in the American Century'

Young John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

'JFK: Coming of age in the American Century'

Fredrik Logevall, Barbara Perry, Marc Selverstone

Thursday, February 04, 2021
11:00AM - 12:00PM (EST)
Event Details

Fredrik Logevall, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revealing biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, 35th president. JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 offers up not only the clearest portrait we have of this enigmatic American icon but a sweeping history of the United States in the middle decades of the 20th century as well. Miller Center Director of Presidential Studies Barbara Perry and professor Marc Selverstone moderate the conversation.

When
Thursday, February 04, 2021
11:00AM - 12:00PM (EST)
Where
Online webinar
Speakers
Fredrik Logevall headshot

Fredrik Logevall

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of History, Harvard University. A specialist on U.S. foreign relations history and modern international history, Logevall is the author or editor of ten books. His book Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2013 Francis Parkman Prize, as well as the 2013 American Library in Paris Book Award and the 2013 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. His other recent works include America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (with Campbell Craig), and the college-level textbook A People and A Nation: A History of the United States (with Jane Kamensky et al.). A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Logevall is a past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Barbara Perry headshot

Barbara Perry

Barbara Perry is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She has authored or edited 12 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. Perry has conducted more than 100 interviews for the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush Oral History Projects; researched the Bill Clinton Oral History Project interviews, and directed the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate.

Marc Selverstone headshot

Marc Selverstone

Marc Selverstone is an associate professor in presidential studies at the Miller Center and chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program. He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Trinity College (CT), a Master’s in international affairs from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in history from Ohio University. A historian of the Cold War, he is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Harvard), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. As chair of the Recordings Program, Selverstone edits the Secret White House Tapes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. He is the general editor of The Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, the primary online portal for transcripts of the tapes, published by the University of Virginia Press.