A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s last hundred days that asks what
might have been Fifty years after his death, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted
author and historian Thurston Clarke argues that the heart of that legend is
what might have been. As we approach the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination,
JFK’s Last Hundred Days reexamines the last months of the president’s life to
show a man in the midst of great change, finally on the cusp of making good on
his extraordinary promise. Kennedy’s last hundred days began just after the death of two-day-old Patrick
Kennedy, and during this time, the president made strides in the Cold War, civil
rights, Vietnam, and his personal life. While Jackie was recuperating, the
premature infant and his father were flown to Boston for Patrick’s treatment.
Kennedy was holding his son’s hand when Patrick died on August 9, 1963. The loss
of his son convinced Kennedy to work harder as a husband and father, and there
is ample evidence that he suspended his notorious philandering during these last
months of his life. Also in these months Kennedy finally came to view civil rights as a moral as
well as a political issue, and after the March on Washington, he appreciated the
power of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for the first time. Though he is often depicted as a devout cold warrior, Kennedy pushed through his
proudest legislative achievement in this period, the Limited Test Ban Treaty.
This success, combined with his warming relations with Nikita Khrushchev in the
wake of the Cuban missile crisis, led to a détente that British foreign
secretary Sir Alec Douglas- Home hailed as the “beginning of the end of the Cold
War.” Throughout his presidency, Kennedy challenged demands from his advisers and the
Pentagon to escalate America’s involvement in Vietnam. Kennedy began a
reappraisal in the last hundred days that would have led to the withdrawal of
all sixteen thousand U.S. military advisers by 1965. JFK’s Last Hundred Days is a gripping account that weaves together Kennedy’s
public and private lives, explains why the grief following his assassination has
endured so long, and solves the most tantalizing Kennedy mystery of all—not who
killed him but who he was when he was killed, and where he would have led us.
