Profiles In Courage.

KENNEDY, John F.

$20,000.00

Item Number: 74004

New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1956.

First edition of Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work. Octavo, original half cloth, with eight pages of black-and-white photogravures. Foreword by Allan Nevins. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Fred Payne with the highest regards John Kennedy.” The recipient Frederick G. Payne was a United States Senator from Maine from 1953 to 1959. He previously served as the 60th Governor of Maine from 1949 to 1952. Kennedy and Payne worked together in the Senate in the 1950s and were close friends. “From the Personal Library of Senator Frederick G. Payne” stamped opposite the front free endpaper, near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Phil Grushkin. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional association linking these two United States Senators.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning book was written when Kennedy was the junior senator from Massachusetts, and it served as a clarion call to every American. The inspiring accounts of eight previous heroic acts by American patriots inspired the American public to remember the courage progress requires. Now, a half-century later, it remains a classic and a relevant testament to the national spirit that celebrates the most noble of human virtues. Kennedy relates these heroisms to sketches of American politicians who have risked their careers for principle. "A man does what he must," he wrote, "in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures-and that is the basis of all human morality."