The co-author of two books detailing aspects of JFK’s career, and an editor of his famous tapes, Timothy Naftali is completing a biography for Norton that looks at the entire presidency in light of newly available documents, oral histories and tapes. Naftali finds a Kennedy who is more pragmatic and political than his inner circle acknowledged and more skeptical of the Cold War and American power than revisionist critics ever realized. And, as Naftali also discovered, JFK’s elusiveness was not accidental. In his talk, Naftali explains how Kennedy, his family and his closest literary allies helped to cultivate the mysteries that would long bedevil biographers.
This lecture was held on Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 at New York University's Center for the Study of Transformative Lives. Introduced by Center director Philip Kunhardt.