Profiles in Courage

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Profiles in Courage book cover
Profiles in Courage book cover

Profiles in Courage is a book written by John F. Kennedy, describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States Senators from throughout the Senate's history. The profiled senators crossed party lines and/or defied the public opinion of their constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions.

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[edit] History and background

Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts from 1952 until he was elected president in 1960. With help from research assistants and the Library of Congress, Kennedy wrote the book at his bedside during 1954 and 1955 while on leave from the Senate to recover from surgery to treat his troublesome back. There has been speculation that Kennedy used a ghost-writer - at least in part - to write his book. [1]

[edit] List of senators profiled

[edit] Reception

After its release on January 1, 1956, Profiles in Courage was widely acclaimed and helped Kennedy earn national recognition. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957 and remains one of the definitive books written on both political courage and the U.S. Senate.

Profiles in Courage was made into a television series that aired on the NBC network during the 1964-1965 television season.[2]

[edit] Controversy

Questions have been raised about how much of the book was actually written by Kennedy and how much by his research assistants. In 1957, newspaper columnist Drew Pearson appeared on ABC News' The Mike Wallace Show and claimed that the book had been ghostwritten and later named Kennedy’s "research associate" Theodore C. Sorensen as the ghost writer. Both Kennedy and Sorensen denied this claim. ABC News, under pressure from Kennedy and his lawyer Clark Clifford[citation needed], retracted the story. However years later historian Herbert Parmet analyzed the text of Profiles in Courage and wrote in his book The Struggles of John F. Kennedy that although Kennedy did oversee the production and provided for the direction and message of the book, it was clearly Sorensen who provided most of the work that went into the end product.

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