‘Grace under pressure,’ Hemingway defined it.” Impactful Excerpt He writes: “This is a book about that most admirable of human virtues – courage. Kennedy explains that the book is about his admiration of the courage shown by elected leaders in the face of adverse factions like their electorates, popular opinion, and political action committees which pull these elected men in different directions. In the preface to Profiles in Courage, Senator Kennedy discusses the “problems of political courage in the face of constituent pressures, and the light shed on those problems by the lives of past statesmen.” He describes the three types of pressure faced by senators as: pressure to be liked pressure to be re-elected and pressure of the constituency and interest groups.

Profiles in Courage, which Kennedy dedicated to his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, received the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957.

His own battles with physical pain and his experiences in World War II as a PT boat commander also gave him inspiration. The project resulted in the publication of Profiles in Courage, which focuses on the careers of eight United States senators Kennedy felt had shown great courage under enormous pressure from their parties and their constituents. When Kennedy took a leave of absence from the Senate in 1954 to recover from back surgery, it gave him the opportunity to study the topic of political courage. Kennedy’s election to the House in 1946 and the Senate in 1952 gave him personal experience in dealing with the conflicting pressures which legislators face. The thesis was a study of the failure of British political leaders in the 1930s to oppose popular resistance to rearming, leaving the country ill-prepared for World War II. Kennedy had long been interested in the topic of political courage, beginning with his senior thesis at Harvard.

Profiles in courage book