The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Michael J. Hogan is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and Emeritus Professor of History at the Ohio State University. Past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Hogan served for fifteen years as editor of Diplomatic History, the journal of record for scholars of American foreign relations and national security studies. He is the author or editor of ten books, notably his prize-winning history The Marshall Plan (Cambridge, 1987) and A Cross of Iron (Cambridge, 1998), his book on the origins of the national security state, and he has written numerous essays and articles in leading professional journals, including The American Historical Review and The Journal of American History.

'This is a fabulous book on the 'Kennedy brand,' and its most meaningful ingredient - JFK himself. Michael J. Hogan is able to show how remembering the former US president in the decades after his death, was not just a matter of political and historical commemoration. Instead, it became an orchestrated effort to create and run a marketable product-person, complete with the continuous repetition of specific characteristics (JFK's style); the link between product and recognition; principal customer orientation and continuous adaptation of the product to contemporary audiences; and the creation of a distinctive 'corporate identity' where assistants and employees (in this case: the Kennedy clan members and officials) were and continue to be required to 'live' the brand. There is a history of political person branding to be written and Hogan shows us how and why.' Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Freie Universität Berlin

• 1. The afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: an introduction; 2. All the world's a stage: constructing Kennedy; 3. From history to memory: assassination and the making of a sacred symbol; 4. Ritual and remembrance: cultural trauma, collective memory, and the funeral of John Fitzgerald Kennedy; 5. In death there is life: monuments of paper and pen; 6. In death there is life: monuments of glass, steel, and stone; 7. The memory wars: contesting Kennedy; 8. Gone but not forgotten: history, memory, nostalgia.