1.JPK diary, February 23, 1938, box 100, JPKP.

2.NYT, February 11, 1938. Rose had planned for herself and the children to travel at the same time as her husband, but she came down with appendicitis and had to postpone her departure.

3.JPK to Felix Frankfurter, December 5, 1933, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 122; Nelson, John William McCormack, 222–23. On the donations, see Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 66; and Newsweek, September 12, 1960. David Nasaw gives a lower sum for the personal contribution: $15,000. Nasaw, Patriarch, 182–83.

4.Krock, Memoirs, 169–71; Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 106.

5.Quoted in Brands, Traitor to His Class, 457. When a friend charged the administration with pursuing far-left policies, Kennedy shot back: “There has been scarcely a liberal piece of legislation during the last sixty years that has not been opposed as Communistic.” Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 11.

6.Nasaw, Patriarch, 272.

7.Krock, Memoirs, 333; Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy, 114–15.

8.Roosevelt, My Parents, 208–10; Whalen, Founding Father, 214.

9.Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 153–54; Roosevelt, My Parents, 208–10.

10.Henry Morgenthau Jr. diaries, December 8, 1937, vol. 101, HMP, LC; Nasaw, Patriarch, 273. According to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, a key advocate of the appointment was Thomas Corcoran, a lawyer and close adviser to FDR. Corcoran, Ickes wrote in his diary, “had done everything that he could to bring about the appointment of Kennedy to London, his chief motive being that he wanted to get Kennedy out of Washington.” Harold Ickes diary, December 18, 1937, HIP, LC.

11.NYT, December 9, 1937; Koskoff, Joseph P. Kennedy, 118; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 81.

12.Boake Carter to JPK, December 28, 1937, box 90, JPKP; Nasaw, Patriarch, 275, 277. On the background to the New York Times story, see Arthur Krock private memo, December 23, 1937, box 31, AKP.

13.Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 161; JPK to Jimmy Roosevelt, March 3, 1938, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 239; Whalen, Founding Father, 214–15.

14.On world developments in 1938, see, e.g., Steiner, Triumph of the Dark, chaps. 8–9; Kershaw, To Hell and Back, 303–34; Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 98–144. On the Austrian annexation, see Evans, Third Reich in Power, 646–64.

15.Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 226; Bailey, Black Diamonds, 337–38. By tradition, the U.S. ambassador selected some thirty American debutantes, from at least ten times that number of applicants, for presentation to the king and queen. Because the ambassador rarely knew the women in question, the process was bound to be arbitrary, not to mention time-consuming. Kennedy, after checking with superiors in Washington and the British government, amended the criteria so that thenceforth only American residents of Britain were eligible. Cynics wondered if he did it partly in order to boost the publicity for his own daughters.

16.Cutler, Honey Fitz, 279; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 516. The feat even made the news in France. “M. Kennedy fait ‘hole-in-one,’ ” one paper headlined it. Rose reiterated that Joe Junior and Jack were skeptical about the hole-in-one in a telegram dated March 17, 1948, box 2, JPKP. See also Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 27.

17.Morison, Three Centuries, 476–79; Bunting, Harvard, 187–88; Schlesinger, Life in the 20th Century, 112.

18.George Taylor OH, JFKL; George Taylor, “A Seaman Remembers John F. Kennedy,” The Sea Breeze 76 (July 1964); Gerald Walker and Donald A. Allan, “Jack Kennedy at Harvard,” Coronet Magazine, May 1961, 82–95.

19.Walker and Allan, “Jack Kennedy at Harvard.”

20.Parmet, Jack, 46; Macdonald OH, JFKL.

21.Macdonald OH, JFKL; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 85.

22.Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 205. Hamilton provides an excellent account of the ins and outs of the Spee story.

23.Renehan, Kennedys at War, 21.

24.Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 206–8.

25.JFK to JPK and RK, n.d. (April 1938), box 21, JPKP; JPK to JFK, May 2, 1938, box 21, JPKP; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 209.

26.Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Harvard Today,” Harvard Advocate, September 1936, 20–24; Schlesinger, Life in the 20th Century, 120.

27.Schlesinger, Life in the 20th Century, 120.

28.JFK Academic Record 1937–1938, box 2, JFKPP.

29.To hear the recording, go to Colleen Walsh, “JFK Speaks from His Harvard Past,” Harvard Gazette, May 9, 2017, news.harvard.edu/ gazette/ story/ 2017/ 05/ earliest-recording-of-jfk-found-in-harvard-archives/.

30.Parmet, Jack, 49.

31.Quoted in O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 80.

32.Schlesinger, Life in the 20th Century, 122–23; Leuchtenburg, Shadow of FDR, 64–65; Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith, 47–48.

33.Parmet, Jack, 55. According to Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers, Jack later told them he and his brother Joe met FDR during the 1936 campaign, in the company of their grandfather Honey Fitz. Roosevelt, Jack said, threw out his arms and cried, “El Duce Adelino!” in reference to the older man’s theme song, “Sweet Adeline.” O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny,” 58.

34.Washington Evening Star, January 20, 1961; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 507.

35.For varying interpretations of what happened, see Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 210; and Parmet, Jack, 45; RK, Times to Remember, 215; and Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 54. According to his mother, Jack ruptured a spinal disc when he hit the ground at a bad angle. RK, Times to Remember, 215.

36.Dallek, Unfinished Life, 79–80; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 227.

37.Cawley would go on to marry Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM and later U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, with whom she had six children. Time would name Watson one of the one hundred most influential people of the twentieth century.

38.KLB OH, JFKL.

39.KLB OH, JFKL.

40.Walker and Allan, “Jack Kennedy at Harvard.”

41.O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 84.

42.JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 8, p. 10, box 147, JPKP.

43.Harold Ickes diary, July 3, 1938, HIP, LC; Whalen, Founding Father, 228–29.

44.Quoted in Swift, Kennedys Amidst the Gathering, 61.

45.Chamberlain held to the maxim that “it is always best to count on nothing from the Americans except words.” Quoted in Reynolds, From Munich, 38.

46.In an early dispatch to Roosevelt, Kennedy summed up his early performance: “I think I have made a fairly good start here with the people and seem to be getting along reasonably well with the Government so far.” JPK to FDR, March 11, 1938, box 10, PSF, FDRL. In his first letter as ambassador, which he wrote to Arthur Krock, Kennedy said the present world crisis would have to be solved via an economic settlement rather than a political one. JPK to Krock, 3/8/38, box 31, AKP.

47.JPK to Arthur Krock, March 28, 1938, box 31, AKP.

48.JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 5, pp. 4–5, box 147, JPKP; Reston, Deadline, 66. A biography is Fort, Nancy.

49.JPK to Arthur Krock, March 21, 1938, box 31, AKP.

50.JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 3, pp. 8–10, box 147, JPKP. See also Nasaw, Patriarch, 291–96. Of Kennedy’s original version, Secretary of State Hull wrote to say that he thought “the tone of the speech is a little more rigid, and hence subject to possible misinterpretation, than would appear advisable at this precise moment.” Hull to JPK, March 14, 1938, OF 3060, FDRL.

51.A standard account of these popular views is Cohen, American Revisionists. See also Jonas, Isolationism in America. An excellent study of the longer history of isolationism, dating to the 1890s, is Nichols, Promise. See also Brooke L. Blower, “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919–1941,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 2 (2014): 345–76.

52.Langer and Gleason, Challenge to Isolation, 14, quoted in Olson, Angry Days, 28.

53.Berlin, Personal Impressions, 24.

54.Ernest Hemingway, “Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter,” Esquire, September 1935. Hemingway would later sing a different tune, strongly supporting U.S. entry into the war against the Axis powers.

55.Walter Millis, Road to War: America, 1914–1917 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1935).

56.Quoted in Evans, American Century, 286, 288.

57.Beard, Open Door at Home, 274, quoted in Milne, Worldmaking, 150–51.

58.Burns, Crosswinds of Freedom, 152; FDR quoted in Olson, Angry Days, 32. According to historian Warren Cohen, FDR’s first administration marked “the only period in American history when the country might be fairly labeled isolationist.” Cohen, Nation, 84.

59.Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 505–8.

60.Doenecke, From Isolation to War, 71; Nasaw, Patriarch, 294–95.

61.The literature is large, but see Self, Neville Chamberlain; Paul Kennedy, “Appeasement,” in The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered, ed. George Martel (New York: Routledge, 1999); Parker, Chamberlain; Donald Cameron Watt, “The Historiography of Appeasement,” in Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A.J.P. Taylor, ed. Alan Sked and Chris Cook (London: Macmillan, 1976), 110–129; Andrew Barros et al., “Debating British Decisionmaking Toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s,” International Security 34, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 173–98. A recent book-length examination is Bouverie, Appeasing Hitler, and there is in-depth treatment as well in Steiner, Triumph of the Dark. A summary of the strategic and economic case for appeasement is in Ferguson, War of the World, 319–30. On the Chiefs of Staff warning, see Watt, How War Came, 27.

62.NYT, June 23, 1938; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 87. Page Huidekoper Wilson, secretary in the office, would later write that Kennedy “desperately wanted to have one more thing in common with John Adams: he wanted to be President of the United States.” Wilson, Carnage and Courage, 16. See also Arthur Krock OH, CBP. For Kennedy’s own interpretation of the issue, see JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 9, pp. 3–4, box 147, JPKP.

63.Harold Ickes diary, July 3, 1938, HIP, LC. See also Henry Morgenthau Jr. diaries, August 30, 1938, vol. 140, HMP, LC.

64.Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1938; Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 170–71; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 116–17. Though he was unwilling to recall Kennedy, FDR told Morgenthau some weeks later, “If Kennedy wants to resign when he comes back, I will accept it on the spot.” Henry Morgenthau Jr. diaries, August 30, 1938, vol. 140, HMP, LC.

65.JPK unpublished diplomatic memoir, chap. 9, p. 7, box 147, JPKP.