Prelude to Leadership

Book excerpt: Prelude to Leadership is the private diary of John F. Kennedy when he was a 28-year-old reporter in Europe. It offers a short yet intimate look into the mind of the man who was to become the 35th President of the United States. As World War II was ending and the Cold War was just beginning, a young naval hero decommissioned before war's end because of his crippling injuries, traveled through a devastated Europe. During the trip, John F. Kennedy kept a diary, never before published. As the diary makes clear, that European trip was a turning point in the future President's life. It was on this trip that Kennedy first confronted the "long twilight struggle" for the preservation of Western freedom that would define his Presidency. In these few months an agenda for a Presidency began to be forged, and the closing pages of the diary make clear that it was at this moment in time that Kennedy began laying plans for his first run for Congress , the first step in his journey to the White House.