A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1965 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1966. Schlesinger had served as Special Assistant to President Kennedy from January 1961 until the assassination in November 1963. The book is his account of those years — part memoir, part history, part elegy.
Schlesinger’s Kennedy is the liberal hero: intelligent, ironic, pragmatic, committed to progress but skeptical of ideology, capable of growth (particularly on civil rights), and surrounded by brilliant advisors who brought intellectual seriousness to government for the first time since the early New Deal. The portrait is admiring but not uncritical — Schlesinger acknowledges the Bay of Pigs disaster honestly and documents Kennedy’s early caution on civil rights.
The book’s influence on Kennedy’s historical reputation was enormous. Schlesinger’s narrative — of a young president learning on the job, growing in wisdom, moving toward bold action on civil rights and poverty before being cut down — became the standard liberal interpretation of the Kennedy presidency. Critics have noted its omissions (the extent of Kennedy’s health problems, his personal life, the escalation in Vietnam) and its tendency to present Kennedy’s intentions as accomplishments, but as a literary achievement and as insider history it remains unmatched.
Collecting A Thousand Days
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1965): Black cloth, gold stamping, dust jacket with Kennedy portrait.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $75–$200
- Signed by Schlesinger: $200–$400
- Very good: $30–$75
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation. Pulitzer Prize winner.
The Kennedy White House
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965) won Schlesinger his second Pulitzer Prize and remains the most vivid insider account of the Kennedy presidency. Schlesinger served as Special Assistant to Kennedy and wrote this memoir-history in the months following the assassination, combining personal recollection with extensive research. The book covers the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, and the intellectual atmosphere of Camelot with a literary grace unusual in political memoir. It is unabashedly sympathetic to Kennedy but too intelligent to be mere hagiography.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this objective history? No — and Schlesinger never claimed it was. He was a participant and an admirer of Kennedy, and the book reflects that perspective. Its value lies precisely in its insider knowledge and literary quality, not in the detachment of a purely academic historian.