Cover -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction -- Part I: The Biographies -- Chapter One: Writing Kennedy -- Part II: Politics before the Presidency -- Chapter Two: Kennedy in Congress -- In the House -- In the Senate -- The South and Civil Rights -- Foreign Policy and the Missile Gap -- Labor Racketeering and Reform -- The Media -- Congress and the President -- Chapter Three: The Election of 1960 -- Background -- Rivals -- Kennedy's Youth and Health -- Experience -- Catholicism -- Winning Delegates -- Organization, Money, and Television -- Primaries -- The Democratic National Convention -- Nixon and the Republicans -- The South -- The Religious Issue -- The Great Debates -- The Late Campaign -- Victory -- Further Reading -- Part III: Managing the Presidency -- Chapter Four: The First Family -- Such a Large Family -- Jackie -- Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. -- Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy -- Eunice Kennedy and R. Sargent Shriver Jr. -- Edward M. Kennedy -- Chapter Five: Robert F. Kennedy -- Introduction -- Brothers -- Political Partnership -- Bahía de Cochinos -- Oxford Town -- "We Have Some Big Trouble. I Want You Over Here" -- Conclusion -- Chapter Six: Theodore Sorensen -- The Senate Years, 1953-61 -- Sorensen in the Kennedy White House -- Sorensen after Kennedy -- Sorensen, Kennedy, and the "New Political History" -- Chapter Seven: The Action Intellectuals -- Kennedy and the Professors -- Defense Intellectuals and Foreign Policy Principals -- Walt Rostow and Modernization Theory -- Conclusion -- Chapter Eight: Congress -- Institutional and Procedural Matters -- Civil Rights -- Domestic Policy -- International Affairs -- Foreign Aid -- Vietnam -- Israel -- Cuba -- Other Studies -- Chapter Nine: Civil-Military Relations -- Introduction -- Historiography.

Organizational and Functional Changes -- Civil-Military Relations during a Series of Foreign Policy Crises -- Conclusions -- Chapter Ten: The Media -- Media-Savvy Patriarch: Joseph P. Kennedy's Press Cultivation -- PT-109 -- Before 1960: The Press, Television, and JFK -- "Image and Substance": Kennedy's Campaign Advertisements -- The Great Debates: Television Triumphs -- The New Presidential Press Conference: Live and on Television -- "The Vast Wasteland": Regulating Broadcasting in the New Frontier -- "The Jackie Show" and "The Bobby Show": The Kennedys and Prime-Time TV Documentaries -- The Missiles of October and the Press -- Black Weekend: The Assassination in a New Media Environment -- Mr. Zapruder's Home Movie -- Press Compliance and the Creation of "Camelot" -- Fifty Years On: Kennedy Obsession and Media Fascination -- Part IV: Hot Spots -- Chapter Eleven: Berlin -- Kennedy's Berlin Questions -- Changing Perspectives -- 1961: Securing West Berlin -- 1962: Moving beyond Berlin - and Back -- 1963: Maintaining America's Alliance - and America's Berlin -- Post-1963: Legacies and Enduring Fascination -- Chapter Twelve: Cuba -- The 1960 Campaign -- The Bay of Pigs -- Operation Mongoose -- The Cuban Missile Crisis -- Other Issues -- Chapter Thirteen: Laos -- The Mess -- Cleaning Up -- Conclusion -- Chapter Fourteen: Vietnam -- Hero or Villain? -- The Conflicted Warrior -- From JFK to LBJ -- Toward Consensus -- Enter the Vietnamese -- What if Oswald Had Missed? -- Part V: Global Challenges -- Chapter Fifteen: Europe -- Triumphant Europe, Troublesome Europeans -- The Berlin Crisis -- Nuclear Weapons and Sharing -- The End of the Grand Alliance? -- Conclusion -- Chapter Sixteen: Latin America -- A Brief Note about Cuba -- Origins of the Alliance for Progress -- From Conceptualization to Implementation -- Far from Idealism: Bolivia and Paraguay.

Responding to Coups: Argentina, Peru, and Guatemala -- Another Way to Think about Instability: The Dominican Republic -- The Power of Money: Chile and Brazil -- Personality Conflicts -- The British Caribbean -- The Good -- Conclusion: The Continuation Question -- Chapter Seventeen: The Middle East -- Supporting and Reforming Stable Regimes -- Wooing Neutral Nations -- The Palestinian Refugees and the HAWK Missile Connection -- The Shah's "White Revolution" -- Rewarding the Faithful -- Dominoes of Arab Nationalism: Civil War in Yemen -- Conclusion -- Further Reading -- Chapter Eighteen: Africa -- Africa and the 1960 Presidential Election -- Algeria and the Question of "Rebel Dialogue" -- Ghana and the Volta River Project Decision -- Battleground Africa: The Congo -- Portuguese Africa and the Azores -- South Africa and Apartheid -- Cleaning Up the Welcome Mat for African Diplomats -- Africanists versus Europeanists -- Guinea and Personal Diplomacy -- Conclusion -- Chapter Nineteen: The Sino-Soviet Split -- Introduction -- What Do We Now Know about the Split? -- Trajectory, 1961-63 -- Root Causes -- Resounding Success at Deciphering the Sino-Soviet Split -- Kennedy's Policy: From Puzzled Prudence to Pro-Soviet Experimentation -- Kennedy, China's Bomb, and the Soviet Union -- How Sound Was Kennedy's China Policy? -- Kennedy's Choice: How Wise Was Siding with the Soviets? -- Chapter Twenty: The Nonaligned World -- Room for Neutrality? -- Kennedy and the Belgrade Conference -- Kennedy and India -- Kennedy and Indonesia -- Nonalignment Elsewhere -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-One: Foreign Economic Policy -- Global Economic Challenges -- The Camelot Crowd -- The Atlanticist George Ball and the Skeptics -- Dollar Dilemmas and Trade or Fade -- Gaullism and Trade Negotiations -- Approaching Non-Western Outsiders -- Modernization and Illusions of Development.

Cold War Economics -- Chapter Twenty-Two: The Peace Corps -- Chapter Twenty-Three: Brushfire Wars -- Kennedy and "Subterranean War" -- Cuba -- Vietnam -- Counterfactual History -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-Four: Nuclear Issues -- Introduction -- The Missile Gap -- Strategy and War Plans -- The Arms Race and the Nuclear Buildup -- Crises -- Berlin -- Cuba -- Civil Defense -- Culture and Protest -- Alliances and Nuclear Sharing -- Nuclear Testing and "Peaceful Nuclear Explosions" -- Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and the Limited Test Ban Treaty -- Future Research -- Chapter Twenty-Five: The Moon Race -- The Decision to Go to the Moon -- "Before This Decade is Out" -- Getting Started, 1961-62 -- by 1963, Doubts Arise -- Pursuit of an Illusion? -- JFK's Final Words on Space -- John F. Kennedy and the US Space Program -- Understanding Kennedy's Commitment to Apollo -- A Rational Choice? -- Commitment Reviewed and Reiterated -- Other Explanations -- Achieving JFK's Objectives -- Was There Really a Space Race? -- Apollo and History -- Part VI: Domestic Concerns -- Chapter Twenty-Six: Kennedy and the Liberal Consensus -- From the New Deal to the Liberal Consensus -- Kennedy and "the Liberals" -- Kennedy and the Consensus School -- The Collapse of Consensus and the Rise of the Declension Narrative -- The 1960s and the Unraveling of Liberalism -- Kennedy as a Cold Warrior -- Kennedy, Liberalism, and the Social Movements of the 1960s -- Kennedy and the New Deal Order -- Liberalism at the Grassroots -- The Rise of the Right -- The Future of Liberalism -- Further Reading -- Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Status of Women -- A "Women's Issues" Agenda and the Kennedy Administration -- Assessing the PCSW, the Equal Pay Act, and the Significance of the Kennedy Presidency for Women -- Presidency-Centered Studies -- Historical Studies -- Social Movement Studies.

Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-Eight: Civil Rights -- Introduction: John F. Kennedy and the Civil Rights Movement, 1961-63 -- Establishing the Posthumous Landslide: The Court Historians -- The Biographers -- Civil Rights Historiography -- Merging History and Historiography -- Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Arts -- Further Reading -- Part VII: Dallas -- Chapter Thirty: The Assassination -- The Warren Commission Report -- The Rise of Conspiracy Theories -- The Garrison Investigation -- The 1970s and 1980s -- Medical Evidence -- The 1990s and into the Twenty-First Century -- Lone Assassin Works -- The Usual Suspects -- Fingering the CIA -- Lee Harvey Oswald -- The Tippit Shooting -- Jack Ruby -- Kennedy and Vietnam -- The Photographic Evidence -- Scientific Evidence -- Reference Volume -- Mainstream Historians -- Primary Sources -- Conclusion -- Index.