Author Fredrik Logevall will discuss his new book JFK:  Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956. Registration is required. Registered attendees will be sent the Zoom log-in link via e-mail for this program. This free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Belmont Public Library and is open to the general public.

Fredrik Logevall has spent seven years searching for the "real" John F. Kennedy. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping biography that contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. JFK:  Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 (Random House, 2020) is the first volume of this two-volume biography and spans the first thirty-nine years  of JFK's life, from his childhood to his Harvard and World War II years, through his ascendance on Capitol Hill, and, finally, his decision to run for president. Library Journal says of JFK:  "...this study is accessible and entertaining.  A wide array of history buffs, and readers previously reluctant to consume a Kennedy biography, will enjoy this highly recommended account."

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of History, Harvard University. He is a specialist on U.S. foreign relations history and modern international history and is the author of a number of books, including Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2013 Francis Parkman Prize, as well as the 2013 American Library in Paris Book Award and the 2013 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Logevall holds a PhD in History from Yale University.  He is a past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.