Profiles in Courage
John F. Kennedy, 1956
★ 3.92 from 15.2k ratings on Goodreads
Kennedy’s 1956 study of senators who risked their careers for principle—and what it costs to vote your conscience when party and voters disagree. Earnest and measured, the prose moves through historical sketches at a deliberate pace, with a solemn, reflective tone.
Feels like tenderness, serenity and wonder. About love, death and nature.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy political history told through short senatorial portraits and are interested in questions of conscience and compromise. Be aware that some readers question the authorship, find the framing contrived, and object that several praised senators held racist or harmful views.
Why read it
It offers a compact, morally serious look at public courage, useful when you want to weigh principle against political cost.
A page from the book
Courage is usually a quiet decision, made long before anyone sees it.
For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men — such as the subjects of this book — have lived. The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality. In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience — the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men — each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. What readers say
Readers are moved by profiles of senators who risked careers for principle, and some find the book inspiring or refreshing. Others are skeptical: they question the authorship, call the framing contrived, and object that praised figures had racist or harmful legacies.
John F. Kennedy.Profiles in Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography; Kennedy remains the only U.S. president to have won a Pulitzer.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Profiles in Courage for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy political history told through short senatorial portraits and are interested in questions of conscience and compromise. Be aware that some readers question the authorship, find the framing contrived, and object that several praised senators held racist or harmful views.
- What is Profiles in Courage like?
- Earnest and measured, the prose moves through historical sketches at a deliberate pace, with a solemn, reflective tone. Feels like tenderness, serenity and wonder. About love, death and nature.
- What should I read after Profiles in Courage?
- If you liked Profiles in Courage, try Born Free (Joy Adamson), The Joy of Sex (Alex Comfort) and Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom).
A taste of the feed
The cost of becoming conscious of your own gift.
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
A Moveable Feast · Ernest Hemingway
What a teacher gives a boy whose shoes are already broken.
He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Angela's Ashes · Frank McCourt
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