John F. Kennedy

Collection of quotations by John, Robert and Edward Kennedy offers advice and wisdom on leading a meaningful life.

The accompanying documentary DVD provides a look at both public and private moments of Kennedy's life and presidency.

Correspondence (120 letters) from November 1960 to November 1963, concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a divided Germany, war in Laos, and other international matters.

As World War II was ending and the cold war was just beginning, a twenty-eight-year-old naval hero, decommissioned before war's end because of his crippling injuries, traveled through a devastated Europe. During that trip, John F. Kennedy kept a diary, never before published and until now unknown - even to Kennedy scholars. As the diary makes clear, that European trip was a turning point in the future President's life. The scion of one of America's wealthiest families, Jack Kennedy had grown up in the shadow of an adored older brother destined for greatness. For himself, Jack had intended a quiet career as a college professor or perhaps as an author. But when Joe Kennedy, Jr. was killed in the skies over the English Channel, the expectations of his family and the mantle of leadership passed on to JFK. Would he accept them? That was the question that confronted Kennedy as he traveled in the company of cabinet secretaries and generals, future presidents and prime ministers, toured a humbled Germany, and faced for the first time the power of post-war Russia and the perfidy and bloody-mindedness of Communists in power. It was on this trip, the diary shows, that Kennedy first confronted the "long twilight struggle" for the preservation of Western freedom that would define his Presidency. In these few months an agenda for a Presidency began to be forged. For as the closing pages of the diary make clear, it was at this time that the challenge was accepted, the mantle taken up, and Kennedy began laying plans for his first run for Congress, the first step in his journey to the White House. Prelude to Leadership offers, as Hugh Sidey says in his Introduction, an "intriguing new trove" of insight into the mind of a future president preparing himself for a "still distant challenge." It reveals a man who, not yet thirty, understood not only that a new world drama was taking shape, but that he was destined to play a great role in it.

Millions have been gripped by Oliver Stone's film JFK and its premise that the plot to assassinate Kennedy originated beyond the highest levels of the U.S. government. In the movie, the advocate of this theory is a character named "X" played by Donald Sutherland, who, as the film's "Deep Throat," explains how and why this plot came about. As Stone acknowledged, "X" not only was faithfully depicted in the film, but also as the film's creative adviser provided fully. Documented information and analysis that helped shape the script. This mystery man was not a fabricated character, as some critics contend. His identity can now be revealed: "X" is L. Fletcher Prouty, a former top-level "military-CIA" operative and the author of JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, Prouty presents in book form the explosive thesis that influenced Oliver Stone from the time he first began reading the. Author's writings in the late 1980s. Among the author's revelations in JFK:. Kennedy's plan to change the course of the Vietnam conflict and to remove all U.S. military personnel from that country by the end of 1965 created enormous concern at the center of the military-industrial complex and led directly to his assassination. Upon receiving the report of the Cuban Study Group from Gen. Maxwell Taylor after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, Kennedy vowed to "shatter the. CIA into a thousand pieces." He began by firing longtime Director of Central Intelligence Allen W. Dulles and his top aides. The army set up a full-fledged covert operation derisively named Operation Camelot to thwart Kennedy's efforts to end the war. President Johnson reversed Kennedy's orders to wind down in Vietnam immediately following Kennedy's murder. And in March 1964 he set the course for massive troop escalation. Why Kennedy was ultimately against the war and. Why he was really murdered. Brilliantly written and researched over nearly eight years, JFK is riveting. It is the first eyewitness account by a top-level insider, a man who had access to the primary documents and personalities - including those in the White House - dating back to 1943. The shock waves generated by JFK will shake the halls of government for decades to come.

Chronicles Kennedy's memos from the presidential office from January 1961 to November 1963.

Excerpts from the speeches and writings of President Kennedy, telling what youth can do in such areas as physical fitness, the arts, citizenship, and Armed Forces, public service, and civil rights.

Texts of President Kennedy's 64 official news conferences.

A book dedicated to memorable things said by John F. Kennedy.