JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President - Softcover

Christian Science Monitor's 10 Best Books of July
An Amazon Best History Pick July 2013
A Daily Beast "Brainy Beach Read"

"A real page-turner... makes for a great and stimulating vacation read... deftly weav[es] together the private, personal, and intimate with the public, the political, and the-then-secret public and political, makes one want to keep reading to find out even more of the scoop."
--Daily Beast

"[A] compelling portrait of one of the towering figures of 20th-century America."
--Christian Science Monitor

"A fascinating analysis of what was... and what might have been."
--Booklist

"Demonstrates that three often painful years in office had taught Kennedy valuable lessons... Clarke delivers a thoroughly delightful portrait."
--Kirkus (starred)

"Camelot devotees will relish insider details, from descriptions of an obviously depressed Vice President Johnson 'growling at anyone who disturbed him' to dismissive jabs at Sen. Barry Goldwater taken from the president's official diary."
--Publishers Weekly

"A graceful, bittersweet chronicle... Clarke clearly admires Kennedy but does not ignore his flaws... an absorbing narrative."
--Library Journal

"Thurston Clarke has done the seemingly impossible: he has found a revealing new angle of vision on John F. Kennedy that brings the president and his times back to vivid life. This is excellent narrative history."
--Jon Meacham, New York Times bestselling author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

"Clarke makes the drama, the excitement, and the dark side of Camelot seem like only yesterday--indeed, you feel as though you're right there, in the Kennedy White House, at Hyannis Port, and aboard Air Force One with JFK, today."
--Strobe Talbott, President, Brookings Institution

"A fascinating, close-up look at the final dramatic months of a young president's life. Thurston Clarke's portrait of Kennedy is masterful in this compelling convergence of history and biography."
--Bob Herbert, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos and former Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times

"The three-months before President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas were frenetic times: civil rights, Vietnam, Berlin and reelection were on his mind. Thurston Clarke's JFK's Last Hundred Days does a marvelous job of reliving Camelot's fragile promise. Clarke is a masterful storyteller and able researcher. This book sings. Highly recommended."
--Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Cronkite

A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s final days that asks what might have been

Fifty years after his assassination, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of great change, both in his family and in the key issues of his day: the cold war, civil rights, and Vietnam, finally on the cusp of making good on his extraordinary promise. JFK’s Last Hundred Days presents a gripping account that weaves together Kennedy’s public and private lives, explains why the grief following his assassination has endured so long, and solves the most tantalizing Kennedy mystery of them all?not who killed him but who he was when he was killed and where he would have led us.