The text provides a solid introduction to Kennedy and his perspectives (public and private) regarding the civil rights movement, and Reeves’s account of JFK’s initial meeting with Khrushchev will captivate almost anyone. This is particularly true of the Bay of Pigs and Berlin if not as much for the quagmire in Southeast Asia. And in many cases his presentation style lends itself to clearer explanations of complex situations than is usually the case. His behind-the-scenes glimpses of the planning, debating, surveying, worrying and second-guessing are uniquely revealing and enormously fascinating. Reeves’s approach offers several advantages.

Instead, topics are examined as they occurred, often simultaneously and in competition for Kennedy’s time and attention, including Laos, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Berlin, the arms and space races and civil rights.

Its fifty-six chapters proceed chronologically and Reeves intentionally avoids presenting subjects thematically (the chapter titles are actually specific dates). The book opens with a chapter introducing Kennedy: his public persona, something of his inner self and the circumstances which catalyzed the author to put pen to paper. Instead, the man who emerges is a calculating politician whose shenanigans are never entirely ignored…but readers see far less of Judith Campbell and Marilyn Monroe than of the policy debates among Kennedy’s political inner-circle. But while the author does not seek to obliterate the Camelot facade he also avoids portraying Kennedy as a deep-thinking intellectual. Reeves’s approach largely steers clear of sensational revelations about Kennedy’s childhood, his precarious health, his notorious womanizing and the various efforts to hide his menagerie of flaws. During its 662 pages the reader follows Kennedy almost day-to-day (and sometimes moment-to-moment) through his presidency – observing the rush of events through Kennedy’s eyes, from his inauguration up to (but not including) his assassination. Instead, it is a lengthy but free-flowing account of his three years in office, not from the point of view of a historian but from Kennedy’s own perspective. Kennedy nor a traditional review of his presidency. The first things readers of “Profile of Power” will discover is that it is neither a conventional biography of John F. He has served as Chief Political Correspondent for The New York Times, as National Editor and Columnist for New York Magazine and Esquire and was Chief Correspondent for PBS’s “Frontline.” He is currently Senior Lecturer at the Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism at USC. Reeves is a former journalist, syndicated columnist and the author of about a dozen books. “ President Kennedy: Profile of Power” by Richard Reeves was published in 1993.

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