John F. Kennedy said, “This is a book about that most admirable of human virtues-- courage. ‘Grace under pressure,' Ernest Hemingway defined it. And these are the stories of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators and the grace with which they endured them." In this quote JFK is talking about his Pulitzer Prize award winning book, Profiles in Courage. Kennedy was the first President to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, which I think is a great accomplishment.
In 1954 when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was recovering back surgery, he started a project on researching the issue of political courage. After about two years of research, the novel Profiles in Courage was published. It focuses on the careers of eight senators, who Kennedy thought showed enormous courage during their time in office. Kennedy dedicated this book to his wife Jacqueline Kennedy. It received the Pulitzer Prize in 1957.The eight senators that Profiles in Courage talks about are John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft. JFK talks about the three types of pressure faced by these senators. Kennedy thought the three pressures were 1) the pressure to be liked, 2) pressure to be re-elected, 3) pressure of the constituency and interest groups. Throughout the book, JFK explains and explores his admiration towards these eight men.I have never read this book, but I look forward to finding it and reading it someday soon. I learned that Kennedy was the first President to win a Pulitzer Prize. Through doing this blog I also learned that Kennedy had back troubles and had to take a leave of absence to recover from back surgery. Even though he took a leave of absence, he made the time productive by researching and writing about these eight men he admired. If he wouldn’t have taken a leave of absence, I think that we would probably never have had such a great piece of literature. The book Profiles in Courage sounds very interesting.-Nathan Ohms
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