"A fantastic look at the famed masochism of the thirty-fifth president. While Watts is writing on astronaut Alan Shepard or author Norman Mailer, the Rat Pack led by Frank Sinatra or the sexy hubris of Hugh Hefner, his mastery of American culture and history is self-evident. This book sparkles with fresh insights and unforgettable anecdotes. Highly recommended!"- Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. "Sometimes the most important historical insights are hiding in plain sight. One is the connection between John F. Kennedy's popularity and the obsessive masculinity of American popular culture during the early 1960s, a connection historians have overlooked for decades. Now--at last--Steven Watts has probed it with elegance, authority, and a wealth of fascinating detail. The result is a devastating takedown of the Kennedy cult. JFK and the Masculine Mystique reveals the cultural pathology that underlay Kennedy's reckless foreign policy and that paved the way for the invasion of Vietnam. Camelot will never look as shiny or as magical again." --Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation "In brilliantly dissecting the style of JFK, Steven Watts has elucidated the substance of Kennedy's time--its politics; its culture; its social, gender, and domestic arrangements. No more discerning book has been written about Kennedy."--Benjamin Schwarz, National Editor, The American Conservative
Steven Watts is an award-winning professor of history at the University of Missouri. He has been a consultant and on-screen expert for several documentaries appearing on PBS, the History Channel, NBC, CNBC, CBS, Bloomberg News, and Fox.