The generous support of our underwriters of the Kennedy Library museum. The Lowell Institute in our media sponsors the boston globe and wbur. We look forward to robust questionandanswer period this evening. You will see full instructions on the screen for submitting your questions via email or in the comments on our youtube page during the program. We are so grateful to have this opportunity to explore president kennedys earlier years and depth with our distinguished speakers this evening. This is the first major work about president kennedy in many years. We have been anticipating this for some time. Much of professor legevalls research took place in the kennedy archive and we are please to look at this conference a new look at president kennedys formative years. Im now delighted to introduce tonight speakers. We are so glad to welcome Frederik Logevall back to the Kennedy Library virtually. He is lawrence the bill for professor of International Affairs and professor of history at harvard university. A specialist on u. S. Foreign relations history and modern international history. He is the author or editor of nine books including embers of war were to want a Pulitzer Prize for history and the Francis Hartman project. Jfk comingofage and the American Century 1917 to 1956 his newest book. Im also pleased to extend a warm welcome to George Packer of moderator for this evening a staff writer for the atlantic. His nonfiction books include our man, Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American Century a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The unwinding, 30 years of american decline which won a National Book award, the assassins gate america in iraq and blood of the liberals. He is also the author of two novels and a play and the editor of a 2volume edition of the essay of george orwell. Please join me in welcoming our special guests. Welcome everybody. I hear they are at least a couple hundred of you which is fantastic and it will be a privilege and a pleasure to talk to Frederik Logevall and get her head out of the presence and out of the news for an hour or an hour and a half and into the past which is a great refuge as well as a guide for us as we try to navigate one of the stormy his years in our lives. Fred i know you as the author of the two essential books on the vietnam war and its not just me saying that the people i know who fought in vietnam and served in vietnam when not i asked where the books i have to read on where when i was researching my biography of Richard Holbrooke who served in vietnam theyd say oh thats easy choosing war and embers of war by the same guy Frederik Logevall so i knew you as a vietnam expert now i know you as something broader as an american expert in someone who shares a lot of interest with me in American History and foreign policy. Its great to get to talk to you about your completely engrossing and source a language is a word that kennedy in the book review a new biography of jfk. Welcome fred and welcome to our audience and i guess the first question is inevitable but why, i know there are biographies but there hasnt been a major one in some years but there have been some. It takes a little bit of chutzpah to wade into those waters where so many other writers have gone so why did you take this on . First off george its tremendous to be with you and to have this opportunity to talk to about all this stuff. Occurred to me listening to that in the way our two moores recent looks are kind of bookends here because mine is from the beginning of the 21st century and yours is about the latter part of the 21st century and maybe we can talk about that. I think ive been fascinated by john f. Kennedy and the kennedys for a long time. Ive written about kennedy in other contexts especially during the cold war and in particular vietnam and volume two which is still to come the vietnam question is what i like to call the mother of all counterfactual. What had what would he have done in vietnam had he survived but theres partly a sense that this hit me one day in the washington harvard yard that i wanted to write up a considerable biography. I did also use my training as a historian and used kennedys life to tell the story not just of his run but americas rise. The rise of United States to great power status and superpower status on Jack Kennedys life. He was worn in 17 right as the u. S. Was entering world war i is very important conflict of course died in 63 which is arguably the of American Power prior to the mass of vietnam so its those two things and then maybe a third george which is the materials in the library are just so phenomenal. The levy thats hosting tonights events, they are so good. I thought a lot of him hadnt been tapped by a lot of people so was something kind of fresh about them. And a sense the biography as you say they are out there but nobody is really done the kind of comprehensive life and times that im doing or trying to do here. And you read about it in your Vietnam Research . I knew about it from the war in vietnam and to some extent from other researchers graduate student of mine and others you said you know incredible folders files and documents in the library. Some of them used in a lot of them havent been used all that much and then of course some have come available that its partly because of my own private research, no question. So you actually zeroed in on documents that you knew were there when she committed herself and you said im going to find box 291 and 73 because i know whats there and no one is ever used it. Obviously some of it in terms of specific collections of specific folders i had to see them myself of course before i had the sense that i knew for example david nassaus triptych biography of joe senior. As historians we all do this and you do this yourself you look in the endnotes of your book to see what other people have written and to see what other people have done in terms of particular collection some of what i think havent been opened and available prior to that work. And then one of the marvelous things about the library even though i think a relatively small percentage of the librarys collections have been digitized, nevertheless anybody can access from their couch. There is stuff available that you can see without having to darken the doors of the library and its a great collection. How did you approach the genre of biography since, i dont think you had written one, right . And its not the same thing as the history of war or the history of even two years decisionmaking about a war. Its more i would say its a little closer to the problems that confront a novelist because you have to see the book with character and especially with one character and bring that character to life and i think all the harder is it is to know that character so how did you approach the genre, the enron unknown genre biography and what models to use or what guidance did you give yourself as you get out how to research and write it . Well, its so interesting especially given that you yourself authored in novel so you have a sense of what you are describing here. Its totally nothing to me and i think youre quite right history and biography are not the same thing. Ive come to realize just how different they are in some ways. Of course there are important similarities. About finding evidence and its about trying to figure out what happened. In this case centered on a particular life but they are similarities between this work in the work ive done previously but as you said they are also different. I think i have been fascinated by the kennedys. It is in some ways the Great American story. This family, its an extraordinary one and i began the book with the arrival of the kennedys and the fitzgeralds in the middle part of the 18th century and then of course joe, particularly joe senior and his huge family and his marriage to rose and jack was basically child emerges and i wont say that the story would right itself, turns out they never do but i think this has Great Potential for me as a historian but also as someone whos interested in biography to see if i can make this work and kind of as i said telling two narratives at the same time the kennedy story and americas story. Tonight i tossed this back to you because you have this experience george. How would you answer your own question in terms of how you approach this with respect to our man collects. I had a different problem which was Richard Holbrooke, by the time my book came out was a fading figure in American Foreign policy. He dominated many views and many events in this lifetime but he was not on the scale of jfk. He starts in the Foreign Service under jfk but is called to service that inspired hoover to join the Foreign Service. I thought i needed to grab the reader with the first paragraph and never let that reader go or else they would abandon the project because who cares . That was my great fear, who cares . You didnt have that problem. People care about jfk. A book about holbrooke in the base of a novelist even though the book has 35 pages of notes and to be as accurate as i can possibly make it. It begins as if youre about to get along by a raconteur and thats the voice that carries the entire book and it gives you the freedom to do things that traditional biographies dont do but always within the guidelines of the contract with the reader which is that it all has to be true. I try to make it sound like a great yarn that you would want to sit down and knit. You and i have talked about this before but i think when we were im chris leidens show together and one thing if i made that you say in the early pages which what i thought about which would be fun to talk about im paraphrasing. I didnt have a chance to look before we came on. He said Something Like only in fiction can we ever really get to know a person deep inside and i thought about that as jack kennedy many people think and maybe its true hes somewhat elusive. Some people warned me early on you were never going to be up to get close to this guy because of the nature that he has. He has his mothers emotional and i think you are so right in this and i hope readers will have to tell me, but i think i can get, given your parameters and only in fiction can we ever really know, i hope i get fairly close. I think you do. I wrote this to you personally and i think its sitting in this book jacket now. It brings us so close to jfk. It really gives us a picture and we should talk about how you achieve that. I think its engrossing and its a pageturner and thats because you are always right there in the middle of the scene or very close to the characters and of course he is ironic and attached. Thats his character but the things that created that character i didnt understand very well until i read your book. So lets just talk about that but two things. Your book, his story begins a month before we enter world war i. And this is an interesting parallel to mine because that other year the American Century began and we entered world war ii, 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 this department that im now in. I think it might have been earning him the struck me at the time but i was a graduate student. Something like this. We think of the American Century beginning in 1940 or 41 or the late 30s. Some might say 1945 which i think is not correct but ernie said no. In fact americas contribution to the war in 1917 to 1918 was formidable and because the way the european powers were decimated i got a great conflagration that wasnt fully evident at the time sagacious farsighted europeans understood that it was only a matter of time before the americans would be dominant on the world stage and in a sense there was a delay i think in the 20s and 30s. American leaders were not quite sure what to do when i write about this in the book. Maybe they were the responsibilities of leadership and maybe not but i felt comfortable in saying 1917 is absolutely critical to the American Century for two reasons. The war in the bolsheviks will revolution which becomes crucial later on in two crucial to Jack Kennedys life. It defines kennedys public life and began in 1917. The true power of the cold war the trajectory and collision with each other. Say you can certainly make that argument and my students asked the question and if you looked at the characteristics of the cold war which i have to do that i say how many of the characteristics were present in 1917. It turns out maybe only two or three of them were in one of them might be a schism but some have been associated with the cold war which is the great arms race and suppression of internal dissidents. Also in the United States and the soviet union a World Structure as opposed to a multipolar World Structures. Some of those things may not be present in 1917 but ive had very smart students, interesting students make a pretty compelling case or 1917 as the start date of the superpower confrontation. Did you have a preconception about jfk going into this . Did you have a picture of him that you are going to then draw . What did you begin relatively agnostic and threeyear research . I think i the sense and its really interesting question. I think that a sense even when i began my work on indochina and the fact that he visited in 1951 span estimate the beginnings of the war. The beginnings of the war and there were all these questions about what the french were trying to achieve. I think i had a sense of the common view of Young Jack Kennedy as a kind of a playboy who had everything handed to him and wasnt serious about anything and only later became the mature striving politician. But i do sense that was maybe not correct. I think the research that i did in the materials on library or so beyond a doubt this is a guy who from an early age is serious about policy, deeply curious about the world. That thats sort of a half answer suggesting i had an inkling that i wanted to revise what was common view and i think the research actually supports that. Some of the most riveting pages are young jocks trip to europe in 1939. Europe is moving rapidly toward war and he has a mix of her rich boys vacation along with access to the most important councils of government all across the continent. Churchill, chamberlain, hitler. Then we see hitler give a speech he was there in limb building is in 37 and they have an opportunity. Then they said they should have gone but in 39 it was almost like a selleck quality that degree of twitchy shows up in places that become hotspots and i open the book on the preface with him in berlin in late august of 39 and even carried a message from the u. S. Consulate official and a senior diplomat in berlin to give him a message to carry back to his father who was the ambassador britain, joe kennedy senior and the message says the germans are going to attack poland within a week. So you have this kind of intrepid guide. He is certainly benefiting from his fathers connections. He wouldnt be able to travel and see these places that joe senior who was already ambitious , his two sons in particular his two eldest sons but its also jfks own early striving and motivation. Lets talk about his parents and his relation to them because i said earlier i felt i understood his caricature much better from his vote. Surely because of the relationship with his father. The relationship with his brother is distant and i said maybe the source of some of his misogyny because his mother was not around for a lot of his childhood and of course his father wasnt either but the mother was expected to be on the father was not. But his father comes across, joe kennedy comes across as making them feel like a lame father. Hes constantly arranging activities and events and we are going to go play football the afternoon and back to dinner and will be reading at night and hes incredible old for a man of that generation incredibly involved in as many childrens lives and incredibly devoted to them. That seems to me to be the core relationship for jack kennedy growing up. Its an extraordinary aspect of joe kennedy seniors personal life and its an interesting example george which is i think joe kennedy and say 1934, 35 is heading up the fcc in washington. He is heading up an important new government entity. And yet he pens these long letters, handwritten letters to jack who is in his last year. He sends long letters handwritten to joad jr. The other children. It strikes me that this is a guy who somehow manages in porton government policy is never blessed instructing his children trying to mold his children in particular his sons. Hes more concerned its quite clear about them especially the two older ones. So whatever one might say about joe kennedy is a businessman as a diplomat and ultimately disastrous term as ambassador to britain and we can talk about that, his devotion to his kids is something. Ill also say i think rose kennedy the mother deserves more in some ways credit for jacks upbringing than she sometimes given credit thing she gets as historical sensibility from her than his father but is actually more like his mother been like his father. His International Sensibility comes in part from her i suggest in the book but as i say shes emotionally withdrawn. She leads a separate life for all the onus is an Canterbury Prep School and at choate. She never paid a visit. I think she comes once to canterbury and she never comes to choat