John F. Kennedy

Signed early printing of Kennedy's classic Pulitzer-winning book, inscribed to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Eugene Clague.

• John F. Kennedy (American).
• November, 1956 printing ("L-F"). New York: Harper & Brothers, (1956).
• xx, [2], 266 pages.
• With eight-page black-and-white photo insert.
• Inscribed by Kennedy on the front free endpaper: "For Commissioner Ewan Clague / a distinguished public servant / with highest regards / John Kennedy."
• Original quarter black over blue and gold cloth, in original price-clipped dust jacket.

"To be courageous, these stories make clear, requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place and circumstance."

Winner of the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography, Profiles in Courage in many ways helped establish the bona fides for the then young Senator from Massachusetts, who would just three years later win the White House. A study of "that most admirable of human virtues," it remains beloved.

This copy is inscribed to Eugene Clague, longtime commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (1946-1965). In his oral history interview for the JFK Presidential Library, Clague recalled: "[Kennedy and I] were in the government and conducting our regular business [...] when he was a senator. I don't remember all the occasions on which our paths crossed, but I do recall meeting him and his wife [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy] once at a White House reception, where he was dancing, and I was dancing with my wife [Dorothy Whipple Clague], and he invited me to come down to see him at the Senate. It happened also that Ted Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen], his administrative assistant, was at that time married to the daughter of one of my closest friends, Edgar Palmer [Edgar Zavitz Palmer] and his wife [Opal Yarbrough Palmer] [... ] So I knew something about Senator Kennedy, and in fact, I have an autographed copy of his Profiles in Courage."