John F. Kennedy was not only a president, but also a symbol for America's most cherished ideas. In The Kennedy Obsession, John Hellmann takes a thoroughly original approach to understanding Kennedy's star power and his carefully crafted public image. Tracing Kennedy's self-creation as diligent scholar, bashful hero, and sensitive rebel-cued by cultural figures such as Lord Byron, Ernest Hemingway, and Cary Grant-and the images of Kennedy in the aftermath of his assassination, Hellmann reveals the painstaking transformation of private life into public persona, of a man into perhaps the major American myth of our time.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Hellmann understands that reading involves more than the consumption of ideas--it is a theater of the mind, in which the reader imaginatively tests a range of roles, voices, identities. Hellmann shows how Kennedy's own early reading (in combination with family lore) provided him with the language of myth, his sense of identity and role. He then analyzes the complex ways in which this private myth-making interacted with the process of social myth-making (in mass media and politics) to shape 'The Kennedy Obsession.'
(Richard Slotkin American University )Review
An admirably focused and clear study... Among the huge number of encyclopedic studies of JFK, The Kennedy Obsession will stand out as readable, focused, and relevant to our understanding of American culture in the 1950s and 1960s.
(John Carlos Rowe, author of At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature )
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
The key elements of Kennedy's youth reappear years later in the deleted opening of Profiles in Courage: the weakened youth in the sickbed, the woman reading hero tales, and the ensuing restoration of masculine vigor through the heroes' visit. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, White House, Sister Agnes, South Pacific, Jack Kennedy, John Hersey, Joe Kennedy, Pilgrim's Way, Great Britain, Nobel Prize, Red River, Sister Beatrice, The Young Melbourne, John Kennedy, Reader's Digest, Cuban Missile Crisis, Joseph Kennedy, Black Jack, British Empire, Ernest Hemingway, Ferguson Passage, Great War, Green Berets, Henry Luce, Los Angeles New!
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The key elements of Kennedy's youth reappear years later in the deleted opening of Profiles in Courage: the weakened youth in the sickbed, the woman reading hero tales, and the ensuing restoration of masculine vigor through the heroes' visit. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, White House, Sister Agnes, South Pacific, Jack Kennedy, John Hersey, Joe Kennedy, Pilgrim's Way, Great Britain, Nobel Prize, Red River, Sister Beatrice, The Young Melbourne, John Kennedy, Reader's Digest, Cuban Missile Crisis, Joseph Kennedy, Black Jack, British Empire, Ernest Hemingway, Ferguson Passage, Great War, Green Berets, Henry Luce, Los Angeles New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 57
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8
books
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- Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy on 32 pages
- Why England Slept by John F. Kennedy on 9 pages
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway on 5 pages
- The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway on 5 pages
- The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys : An American Saga by Doris Kearns Goodwin in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 57 books this book cites
- Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis by Alice L. George on page 120, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- In Love With Night: The American Romance With Robert Kennedy by Ronald Steel in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War by K.A. Cuordileone in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America by Stephen G. Rabe in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- A dictionary of Congregational usages and principles according to ancient and modern authors: by Michigan Historical Reprint Series on page 41
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