1. It’s possible they had a passing encounter on a train in 1948. See Michael Beschloss, introduction to Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1964, ed. Michael Beschloss (New York: Hyperion, 2011), xx.

2. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 51; Spoto, Jacqueline, 75–76. Charlie Bartlett said later, “I used to see her up in East Hampton when she visited her father and then down in Washington. She always had these sort of English beaux and I must say they were not up to her.” At the wedding, “I spent the whole evening trying to get Jackie Bouvier across this great crowd to meet John Kennedy.” Andersen, Jack and Jackie: Portrait, 73.

3. In the curious, doubly negative phrase, presumably approved by Jackie prior to publication (for this was an authorized, soft-focus book, penned by a friend and published just after Jackie became First Lady, in 1961, which Jackie went through line by line prior to publication), she said, “Such a heartbreak would be worth the pain.” Thayer, Jacqueline, 95. In Jackie’s recollection no asparagus was served that evening.

4. Anthony, As We Remember Her, 71, quoted in Bradford, America’s Queen, 58; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 770.

5. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 64; O’Brien, No Final Victories, 42; Kennedy, Historic Conversations, 42.

6. New York World-Telegram, December 17, 1952.

7. Klein, All Too Human, 363.

8. In some of these respects Jackie resembled his late sister Kick, to whom he had been so close. (In other respects, the two women were sharply different.) See Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 29–30.

9. Klein, All Too Human, 183. On Jack Kennedy paying more attention to his attire during this time, see Powers extended oral history, box 9, DFPP, JFKL.

10. Spoto, Jacqueline, 83; Levingston, Kennedy and King, 18–19.

11. Kennedy, Historic Conversations, 27.

12. Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 105. Gore Vidal, a distant relation of Jackie’s by marriage, spoke in similar terms: “If she hadn’t married Jack she would have married someone else with money, although it wasn’t likely she would have gotten someone as exciting as Jack in the bargain. When given a choice of glory or money, most people choose glory. But not Jackie. She also wound up with plenty of the latter, of course, but she didn’t need that like she needed to be rich.” Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 106.

13. Kelley, Jackie Oh!, 30; Sorensen, Kennedy, 37; Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 112. Jack Kennedy quoted in Martin, Hero for Our Time, 76.

14. Martin, Hero for Our Time, 77.

15. Alastair Forbes OH, JFKL.

16. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 190.

17. Quoted in Dallek, Unfinished Life, 193.

18. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 191; Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 7.

19. Quoted in Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 60.

20. Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 7.

21. See her comments to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in March 1964, printed in Kennedy, Historic Conversations. In later years, her views shifted and she became a strong advocate for women’s rights and gender equality.

22. Leaming, Untold Story, 5; Spoto, Jacqueline, 53. A classmate recalled Jack Bouvier’s visits to Miss Porter’s: “What we liked to do was run around and shake our behinds at him because he was an absolute lecher, absolute ravening, ravenous lecher, and Jackie, of course, knew it, and it amused her, but I don’t think she was aware—she might have been, she didn’t miss anything—of the extent to which we were teasing her father and making fun of him….He came through as this sort of cartoon example of a dirty old man and I don’t know if Jackie ever realized the extent to which we felt he was.” Ellen “Puffin” Gates quoted in Bradford, America’s Queen, 27.

23. Perry, Jacqueline Kennedy, 27.

24. Spoto, Jacqueline, 61.

25. Baldrige, Kennedy Style, 12–13; Spoto, Jacqueline, 59.

26. A penetrating assessment of the year in France is Kaplan, Dreaming in French, 7–46. Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 85; Vidal, Palimpsest, 309–10. For a skeptical view of the elevator story, see, e.g., Bradford, America’s Queen, 66–67.

27. Prix de Paris application materials, box 1, JKOP; Kaplan, Dreaming in French, 48–49. A later winner of the competition was Joan Didion.

28. Washington Times-Herald, April 21, 1953.

29. Burns, John Kennedy, 117–18.

30. Sorensen, Kennedy, 11–12.

31. Burns, John Kennedy, 118–19.

32. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 311.

33. Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 151–55. For a partial defense of Kennedy’s “cutthroat approach to personnel,” see Matthews, Jack Kennedy, 155.

34. Sorensen, Counselor, 97.

35. Sorensen, Counselor, 98–99. On January 12, Kennedy told the Mutual Broadcasting System’s Reporters Roundup that he approved of some of McCarthy’s conduct, but “I disapprove very strongly” of other actions of the Wisconsin senator, including the effort to go after alleged Communists on the faculties of private universities. New Bedford Standard Times, January 13, 1953.

36. Lasky, J.F.K., 165. Kennedy’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, said of Sorensen that he was a “quiet, reserved, quizzical intellectual,” a tower of steadfast support who was “devoted, loyal and dedicated to the Senator in every way possible. Time meant nothing to him—he gave it all to the Senator.” Lincoln, My Twelve Years, 18.

37. Oliphant and Wilkie, Road to Camelot, 4.

38. Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 123; Sorensen, Counselor, 113.

39. Evelyn Lincoln, “My Twelve Years with Kennedy,” SEP, August 15, 1965; Sorensen, Counselor, 114–15; Sorensen, Kennedy, 30. Jackie Kennedy would later say: “He never wanted to have people in the evening that he worked with in the daytime.” Kennedy, Historic Conversations, 23–24.

40. Lincoln, “My Twelve Years with Kennedy.”

41. Sorensen, Kennedy, 55–56.

42. John F. Kennedy, May 18, 1953, Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., 5054–5056; John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1953, Congressional Record, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., 5466. Many of the speeches can be found in box 893, JFK Pre-Pres.

43. John F. Kennedy, “What’s the Matter with New England?” New York Times Magazine, November 8, 1953; John F. Kennedy, “New England and the South,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1954; Shaw, JFK in the Senate, 69.

44. Quoted in Chernus, Atoms for Peace, 94.

45. See Osgood, Total Cold War, 71–74; and Bowie and Immerman, Waging Peace.

46. On the war’s final phase and its resolution, see, e.g., Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, chap. 6; and Foot, Substitute for Victory.

47. Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, 134–35.

48. Wright Smith, “Too Many Generals: Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs, and Civil-Military Relations in Cold War America,” Senior Honors Thesis, Harvard University, 2017.

49. This is a theme in Craig and Logevall, America’s Cold War.

50. Speech transcript, February 1, 1953, box 893, JFK Pre-Pres; Nye, Soft Power.

51. Gullion OH, JFKL; Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 193.

52. Logevall, Embers, 342–47.

53. L. P. Marvin to Priscilla Johnson, April 17, 1953, box 481, JFK Pre-Pres; Priscilla Johnson to JFK, April 23, 1953, box 481, JFK Pre-Pres; JFK to John Foster Dulles, May 7, 1953, box 481, JFK Pre-Pres.

54. Logevall, Embers, chap. 14; JFK, Amendment to Mutual Security Act of 1951, July 1, 1953, Compilation of JFK Speeches, JFKL; Dallek, Unfinished Life, 186.

55. NYT, July 2, 1953.

56. According to some accounts, the proposal came immediately before she left for London. See, e.g., Spoto, Jacqueline, 97–98. Yet another theory has Jack proposing at Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown on the evening of June 24, but this seems unlikely, given that the formal press announcement was issued that day and the story was in the next morning’s papers. More likely is that the couple celebrated their engagement at Martin’s, a place they were known to frequent. WP, June 23, 2015.

57. The letter, to Joseph Leonard, an Irish priest with whom she exchanged regular letters over a period of fourteen years, is quoted in WP, May 13, 2014.

58. David Pitts, a perspicacious observer of the Jack-Lem relationship, concludes that Lem found it relatively easy to adjust to the marriage. Pitts, Jack and Lem, 137. See also KLB OH, JFKL.

59. Spalding quoted in Andersen, Jack and Jackie: Portrait, 104; and in Klein, All Too Human, 139–40. See also Bradford, America’s Queen, 64.

60. Leaming, Untold, 34; Leaming, Mrs. Kennedy, 9.

61. Klein, All Too Human, 146–47; Martin, Hero for Our Time, 74.

62. To Father Leonard she sent a telegram: “Announcing Engagement to Jack Kennedy Tomorrow Letter Follows So Happy Love—Jacqueline.” Irish Times, May 13, 2014.

63. David Powers extended OH, box 9, DFPP; Andersen, Jack and Jackie, 119; Paul F. Healy, “The Senate’s Gay Young Bachelor,” SEP, June 13, 1953.

64. Jacqueline Bouvier to RK, June 29, 1953, box 4, JPKP.

65. New York Daily News, June 25, 1953; Boston Herald, June 25, 1953; NYT, June 25, 1953.

66. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 317.

67. Lincoln, Twelve Years, 25; O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, 266.

68. JPK to Macdonald, July 22, 1953, box 4, JPKP, JFKL; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 317.

69. Von Post’s account, which contains implausibly exact dialogue and other dubious-sounding details, is in her brief memoir, Love, Jack, 19–33.

70. Von Post, Love, Jack, 33; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 319.

71. McNamara, Eunice, 137; Bradford, America’s Queen, 69–70. A few weeks before the wedding, Jack hosted an engagement reception in his sister’s honor at his Washington residence. Among those in attendance: Vice President Richard Nixon and Democratic senators Stuart Symington, George Smathers, and Albert Gore. BG, April 30, 1953.

72. Fay, Pleasure of His Company, 154–55.

73. Martin, Hero for Our Time, 80.

74. Bradford, America’s Queen, 71; Parmet, Jack, 261.

75. NYT, September 13, 1953.

76. Providence Sunday Journal, September 13, 1953, quoted in Bradford, America’s Queen, 73.

77. NYT, September 13, 1953.

78. Janet Auchincloss OH, JFKL.

79. Quoted in Hunt and Batcher, Kennedy Wives, 152.

80. Fay, Pleasure of His Company, 141, 143.

81. Hess, America’s Political Dynasties, 506.

82. The full poem is in box 20, JPKP, JFKL.

83. Anderson, Jack and Jackie, 131.

84. Adler, America’s First Ladies, 135.

85. Parmet, Jack, 296–97. The excerpt read: “Whether I am on the winning side or the losing side is not the point with me; it is being on the side where my sympathies lie that matters, and I am ready to see it through to the end. Success in life means doing that thing than which nothing else conceivable seems more noble or satisfying or remunerative, and this enviable state I can truly say that I enjoy, for had I the choice I would be nowhere else in the world than where I am.”

86. Anderson, Jack and Jackie, 133.

87. David Ormsby-Gore OH, JFKL.

88. Martin, Hero for Our Time, 95.

89. Quoted in Smith, Grace and Power, 7.

90. Anderson, Jack and Jackie, 139. Tip O’Neill was fascinated by the steady improvement in the speechmaking. In time, he said, Kennedy turned into a “beautiful talker.” Thomas “Tip” O’Neill OH, TOP.