Youtube page during the program. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to explore the earlier years with our distinguished speakers this evening. This is the first major work about president kennedy in the many years weve been anticipating this for some time. Much of the research took place in the Kennedy Library archives and we are pleased to learn more about this comprehensive new look at the formative years. Im now delighted to introduce tonights speakers. We are glad to welcome frederick back to the Kennedy Library virtually. He is the professor of International Affairs and professor of history at harvard university. A specialist on u. S. Foreign relations history hes the author or editor of nine books including embers of war that won the Pulitzer Prize for history. The books include our man Richard Holbrook and at the end of the American Century. To get out of the news for an hour and a half as we try to navigate one of the storm used years in our lives. I knew you as a vietnam expert but now something broad as an american expert and shares a lot of interest with me and Foreign Policy so its great to talk about this completely engrossing biography of jfk. So, welcome, fred and welcome to the audience. I guess the first question is inevitable, but why another biography. There are a dozen. It takes a little bit to wade into the waters where so many others have gone and we thought we knew everything there was to know so why did you take this on . It is tremendous to be with you and have the opportunity to talk about this stuff. In a way our two most recent books mine is the beginning of the American Century and yours is about the latter part but its great to be on with you. Ive been fascinated by john f. Kennedy and the kennedys for a long time. Ive written about it in other contexts and in particular, vietnam and its still to come, that question and the mother of all counterfactuals what would he have done had he survived. Its partly this interest. And then maybe a third the materials in the library. Incredible folders, files, documents in the library. Some of them used. It was because my own private research, no question. You zeroed in on the documents and i know there no one has ever used it. Some of it in terms of the specific collections and specifics folders i had to see them myself up close but i knew the terrific biography and i was able i do this and you do this yourself you look in the endnotes to see what other people have done and i can see what a few other people have done which havent been open are available. Theres some stuff available you can see without having to darken the doors of this library but its a great collection. So how did you approach the genre of the biography. Its the history of the war and even two years of decisionmaking about the war. I would say its a little closer to the problems that confront a novelist because you have to fill your book with characters and especially one character and bring that character to life. I think all the harder if everyone thinks they already know that character so how did you approach the genre and what models did you use what guidance did you give yourself as you figured out how to research and write it . Its so interesting given that you your self authored novels so you have a sense of what you are describing and that is fascinating to me. History and biography are not the same thing. Ive come to realize how different they are in some ways. There are also important similarities about finding evidence. Its about trying to figure out what happened and its centered on a particular life but there are similarities between this work and the work ive done previously but they are also different. I think i had been fascinated by the kennedys. It is in some ways the Great American story. This family is just an extraordinary one and i begin with both the kennedys and the fitzgeralds in the middle part of the century and then of course joes rise and then this huge family and jack that is a sickly child that emerges from this. I wont say that i thought the story would find itself but this had Great Potential as a historian and also somebody thats interested in biography and wants to see if i can make this work as telling two narratives at the same time, both the kennedy story and americas story. Can i briefly tossed this back to you because you have this experience how would you answer your own question in terms of how you approach this with respect to our map . I had a different problem which was Richard Holbrook by the time the book came out it was a fading figure in the Foreign Policy and he dominated many rooms and many news events in his lifetime but he wasnt on the scale of jfk. He first went into the service under jfk with his call to service that inspired holbrook to join. I needed to grab the reader with the first paragraph and never let the reader go or else they would abandon the project because who cares. That was my great fear. You didnt have that problem. People care about jfk. I began my book about holbrook in the voice of a novelist even though the book has 35 pages of notes and its as accurate as i could possibly make it it begins with, yes, i knew him as if you are about to hear by a rock into her and that is the voice that carries the entire book and it gave me a ton of freedom to do things traditional biographies dont do but always within the guidelines that it all has to be true so i try to make it sound like something you would want to hear. We talked about this a little bit before but i think that it succeeds marvelous when we were on the show together. One thing that you say that i thought would be fun to talk about a little bit im paraphrasing. I didnt have a chance to look at this before we came on but you said Something Like only in fiction can we ever really get to know a person and i thought about that because Jackie Kennedy, maybe this is true, somewhat elusive, some people warned me early on you will never be able to get close to this guy because of that nature and some other emotional. You are so right in this and i hope the readers will have to tell me whether im right. I think i can get given your parameters that only in fiction can we ever really know, i hope i get fairly close. I wrote this to you personally and i think its sitting there on the book jacket now. It brings us so close it is in intimate picture and we should talk about how you achieve that but i think that the readers will find it a page turner and thats because you are always right there in the middle of a scene or very close to the characters and of course hes ironic and detached. Thats his character, but the things that created that character i didnt understand very well until i read your book so lets talk about that. But your book doesnt begin but his story begins the month before we enter world war i and with it is an interesting parallel to mine because born in 1941 which is the other year the American Century began and entered world war ii so tell me about your decision to frame jfks life as a life of the American Century beginning in 1917 and what that means for our understanding of americas rise to global power. I think it might have been ernest may the late great harvard historian member of the department that im now in. This struck me at the time as a graduate student we think of the American Century beginning in 1940 or 41 or conceivably you could say the late 30s. Some might say 1945 which may not be correct. But he said no in fact americas contribution to the war in 1917 and 1918 was formidable and because of the degree to which the powers were decimated by that great conflict though it was not fully evident at the time, the farsighted europeans understood it was only a matter of time before the americas were going to be dominant on the world stage and in a sense it was a delay in the 20s and 30s. The americanstatesman leaders were not quite sure what they want to do. I write a little about this in the book. Do they want the responsibility, maybe not, but i still feel comfortable in saying 1917 is absolutely critical for two reasons, u. S. Entry into the world and then the revolution becomes so crucial later on and crucial to Jackie Kennedys life. Basically the cold war that defined kennedys public life began in 1917. The powers of the cold war, the trajectory in collision with each other. You could certainly make that argument. They sometimes say to my students i ask when did the cold war begin, and if you look at the characteristics which i also have them do, then i say how many of those characteristics were present some of the things we associate as a great arms race for example, suppression and of course also in the soviet union, a bipolar world structure. Some of those things may not be present but ive had a very smart students make a pretty compelling case at the start date of these competitions. Did you have a preconception about jfk going into this, did you have a picture of him that you were then going to draw or did you begin relatively agnostic . I think that i had a sense even when i began for my work and the fact he visited in 1951. He goes and asks all these penetrating questions about what the french are trying to achieve and i think i had the sense that the common view of young Jackie Kennedy as a kind of playboy that had everything handed to him and wasnt very serious about anything and only later became the mature politician. I had the sense may be that wasnt correct and i think that the research that i did. Again the materials in the library are so marvelous and show beyond a doubt that this is a guy that from an early age is serious about policy, deeply curious about the world. So that is sort of a half answer suggesting i had an inkling that i wanted to revise and i think the research supports. Some o some of the most riveting pages are the trip to europe in 1939 when europe is moving rapidly and hes having a mix of a kind of vacation along with access to the most Important Council of government governmene continent. Churchill, chamberlain, hitler. In 39 nevertheless as you say, it was almost like a silica quality the degree to which he shows up in these places that become hot spots and i open the promise with him in berlin and late august of 39 and he even carries a message from the u. S. Consular official. The ambassador left, but the diplomat gives him a message to carry back to his father who is the ambassador of britain, joe kennedy senior. The message says the germans are going to attack poland within a week. So yes, you have this kind of intrepid guys certainly benefiting from his fathers connection. He wouldnt be able to travel to these places and see these people of joe senior, already ambitious for his two sons, but its also jfks early striving motivation. Lets talk about his parents and his relationship to them because when i said earlier i found he understood the character much better from your book, it was because the relationship with his father. The relationship with his mother is distant, and i wouldnt be the first to say may be the source of some of his misogyny because his mother let him down. She wasnt around a lot of his childhood. Of course his father wasnt either, but the mother was expected to be and father was not. But his father comes across, joe kennedy comes across lets just say he made me feel like a lame father because hes constantly arranging activities and events and every day is scheduled. We will go yachting in the morning and football in the afternoon and discuss Current Events over dinner and reading at night. Hes incredibly involved in his childrens lives and incredibly devoted to them so that seems to me to be the core relationship project kennedy growing up. Is that right . I think it ultimately is and its an extraordinary aspect of joe kennedy seniors persona and there is an interesting example of this. Joe kennedy say 1934, 35 is heading up the fcc in washington, heading up an important new Government Entity and yet he pins these long hand written letters to jack who is in his last year at the prep school. He sends these long hand written letters whos already at harvard and the younger children. It strikes me that this is a guy that somehow managing important government policy is nevertheless constructing his children, trying to mold his children, particularly the sons. Its clear that hes more concerned about them and the two older ones. He is actually more like his mother in many ways than his father. His International Responsibility comes from her that i suggest in the book. She is emotionally withdrawn and leads a separate wife through all of his illnesses at canterbury, she never pays a visit maybe comes once meanwhile she takes extended vacations by herself including to europe. I think that was hard for him as you suggested. You also said at one point what you expect from a woman whose husband flagrantly cheating on her throughout their marriage and humiliated her by bringing mistresses home for dinner the alternative is to fight or maybe leave and those are not alternative she wants to inflict on herself or her family go against religion so the way out to his emotional withdrawal. That is exactly right and i think i suggest in the book they had a fan arrangement that he will be more discreet than he rose early on and she will look the other way and that is what happens. He has notorious affair with Gloria Swanson and hollywood and she realizes i cannot continue to do this but when you think about what she has to do her and then to see them as objects to be conquered thats just a hard environment for her. Where did jacks ambition come from . When the make very clear, wasnt simply handed to him he was his own boy and man and went his fathers way because i was a path of least resistance and he thinks for his own path he doesnt want to deeply hurt his father but he manages to go used a great deal of magnetism from his overbearing father to find themselves so how did that happen . How to that created a political ambition and jack . I thought a lot about that going to those materials that are so much all that evidence in the oral History Collection of the library which is magnificent. They cannot reveal everything. Because he was bedroom door with various ailments, he became the family reader and devoured european history and the statecraft and diplomacy and was early fan of winston churchill. And ambition and realizing he always has his maternal grandfather and the two of them are extremely close and if it is politicians one is much more reserved and one is more scholarly in his approach but also grandpa, i can aspire to do something similar and then finally, especially in our own day and age such an appealing quality of life politics and i think he likes politics precisely because he thinks it matters and it is important. And from a pretty early age before junior is killed in the war, he is already thinking to himself in a particular girlfriend he was close to. Maybe i want to pursue a political career. It is those things in part that brings us serious quality early on. Its not as though joe junior was killed over england or the channel suddenly its up to jack to carry on his fathers dream, jack grows headed that way already. Joe junior would not have had let jack brought to that career which is the incredible intelligence and then money also to be his own man which is essential when you are in the oval office and you generals tell you who need to start world war iii with the soviet union over cuba and 62. I think its right. And joe junior who was the golden child. He bought a lot to the table. Straight from central castin casting, incredibly handsome, healthy as an ox, extremely ambitious. I suggest, i say in the book even if joe junior survives or comes back that we wouldve seen the same kind of trajectory from his younger brother. He had his own reasons for running and had the better clai claim. He already offered a book that was a lightly revised version of his thesis matlab joe junior the wrong way because he was used to being the center of the family. He already have these attributes before joe juniors tragic death and he is making his own decisions even in terms of which office to seek and 1946. Is not in his fathers decision. Tell us how with his mind as a practitioner of statecraft air practices foreignpolicy developed in the crucial years of the late thirties to the early cold war when he first ran for office. How did he become the jack kennedy we now know as president . It seems those are the key years. Tell us what happened and how they affected him and his father to because that is a crucial parting of the ways. This was such a fun part of the whole writing experience for me. My wife will tell me my wife will tell you with the materials show precisely this. I think what happens is he gets to harvard 1936, he has a gap year. The class of 1940. The body one as your body is isolationist and continues to me and he buys into that. His father is ambassador to britain in 1938 and the arch appeaser even more than chamberlain himself. Initially jack is inclined to agree with this position. But, this is the distinction between him and his brother, joe junior is never comfortable outside his fathers shadow so he parrots his father to the end. What is fascinating to me is to observe little by little jack kennedy begins to see a more complex and crowded world that his father or older brother and the problems with the narrow colloquial nationalism to see the threats posed by both the japanese and the germans. Hard to say exactly when but before pearl harbor by the early part of 31 is a confirmed internationalist. shift toward growth in his view for his own pacific experience and 43 is important to affirm for him, for young jack kennedy, the United States has to play a leading role in World Affairs. So they have long discussions about what the us will should be and he comes back affirmed in that belief but he also comes back skeptical the military you see in his letters home that is interesting military leadership. If we can develop this when you see this to the end of his life so it is those two and his lieutenant and the young officer that the world is in any way abstract. Because the whole genera