Profiles In Courage.

KENNEDY, John F.

$35,000.00

Item Number: 2154

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956.

First edition of Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work. Octavo, original half cloth, with eight pages of black-and-white photogravures. Association copy, inscribed by the author to Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall on the front free endpaper, “To Senator Saltonstall- with the very highest regards of his colleague John Kennedy.” The recipient, Leverett Saltonstall was the senior senator of Massachusetts while John Kennedy was the junior senator. Saltonstall served as Republican Whip from 1949-1957 and as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1953-1955. He attended the wedding of John Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953, and the two served together in the Senate from 1953 to 1960. Saltanstall and Kennedy worked together closely over the course of several years, as evidenced of one of their constituents thought the two had an even closer relationship, mistakenly assuming Saltonstall to be Kennedy’s uncle. “If you are ready to admit it,” Kennedy kidded in a 1963 letter, “I am.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Phil Grushkin. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An excellent association linking these two statesmen.

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."