The Making Of The President 1960

Analyses the 1960 election when John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States.

When John Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he also won the right to put his own spin on the victory. Rorabaugh cuts through the mythology of this election to explain the operations of the campaign and offer a corrective to Theodore White's flawed classic, 'The Making of the President'.

"This revelatory account of the 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon shatters long-held myths about one of the twentieth century's most important political events. Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources, such as FBI surveillance of Kennedy, Nixon's correspondence with Billy Graham, and the papers of Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and many others, Irwin F. Gellman provides the first balanced history of both the general election and the jockeying within the parties that preceded it"--

“White unites a novelist's knack of dramatization and a historian's sense of significance with a synthesizing skill that grasps the reader by the lapels.” —Newsweek The third book in Theodore H. White's landmark series, The Making of the President 1968 is the compelling account of the turbulent 1968 presidential campaign, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and election of Richard Nixon. White made history with his groundbreaking The Making of the President 1960, a narrative that won the Pulitzer Prize for revolutionizing the way that presidential campaigns were reported. Now, The Making of the President 1968—back in print, freshly repackaged, and with a new foreword by Chris Matthews—joins Theodore Sorensen's Kennedy, White's The Making of the President 1960, 1964, and 1972, and other classics in the burgeoning Harper Perennial Political Classics series.

A Harper Perennial Political Classic, The Making of the President 1960 is the groundbreaking national bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 presidential campaign and the election of John F. Kennedy. With this narrative history of American politics in action, Theodore White revolutionized the way presidential campaigns are reported. Now back in print, freshly repackaged, and with a new foreword written by Robert Dallek, The Making of the President 1960 remains the most influential publication about the election of John F. Kennedy.

The 1960 presidential election, won ultimately by John F. Kennedy, was one of the closest and most contentious in American history. The country had never elected a Roman Catholic president, and the last time a Catholic had been nominated--New York Governor Al Smith in 1928--he was routed in the general election. From the outset, Kennedy saw the religion issue as the single most important obstacle on his road to the White House. He was acutely aware of, and deeply frustrated by, the possibility that his personal religious beliefs could keep him out of the White House. In The Making of a Catholic President, Shaun Casey tells the fascinating story of how the Kennedy campaign transformed the "religion question" from a liability into an asset, making him the first (and still only) Catholic president. Drawing on extensive archival research, including many never-before-seen documents, Casey takes us inside the campaign to show Kennedy's chief advisors--Ted Sorensen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Archibald Cox--grappling with the staunch opposition to the candidate's Catholicism. Casey also reveals, for the first time, many of the Nixon campaign's efforts to tap in to anti-Catholic sentiment, with the aid of Billy Graham and the National Association of Evangelicals, among others. The alliance between conservative Protestants and the Nixon campaign, he shows, laid the groundwork for the rise of the Religious Right. This book will shed light on one of the most talked-about elections in American history, as well as on the vexed relationship between religion and politics more generally. With clear relevance to our own political situation--where politicians' religious beliefs seem more important and more volatile than ever--The Making of a Catholic President offers rare insights into one of the most extraordinary presidential campaigns in American history.

“1960 aims to take us deeper into the campaign than Theodore White’s famous The Making of the President, 1960. And it does.”—Chicago Sun-Times This is award-winning historian David Pietrusza's hard-edged account of the 1960 presidential campaign, the election that ultimately gave America “Camelot” and its tragic aftermath. It is the story of the bare-knuckle politics of the primaries; the party conventions' backroom dealings; the unprecedented television debates; the hot-button issues of race, religion, and foreign policy—and, at the center of it all, three future presidents: Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. “Terrific.” —Robert A. Caro, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award “A stirring, hard-edged political saga… An outstanding reexamination.”—Booklist "1960 provides new insights into that year's hard-fought, pivotal election, but, more than that, 1960 is great storytelling—a fascinating, can’t-put-it-down account of how American politics really works.”—former United States Attorney General Richard Thornburgh “Essential for understanding the political forces that in many ways shaped the world we live in today.” —David Mark, author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning

“[White] revolutionized the art of political reporting.” —William F. Buckley The Making of the President 1972 is the fourth book in Theodore H. White’s landmark series, a riveting account of the 1972 presidential campaign and Richard M. Nixon’s precedent-shattering landslide victory. White had made history with his groundbreaking narrative The Making of the President 1960, winning the Pulitzer Prize for revolutionizing the way that presidential campaigns were reported. Now, The Making of the President 1972—back in print, freshly repackaged, and with a new foreword by Cokie Roberts—joins Theodore Sorensen’s Kennedy, White’s The Making of the President 1960, 1964, and 1968, and other classics in the burgeoning Harper Perennial Political Classics series.