John Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963) twice signed book “Profiles in Courage.” When John 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. The project resulted in the publication of Profiles in Courage, which focuses on the careers of eight United States Senators whom Kennedy felt had shown great courage under enormous pressure from their parties and their constituents. 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.’’ John F. 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 that pull these elected men in different directions. He writes: “This is a book about that most admirable of human virtues – courage. ‘Grace under pressure,’ Ernest Hemingway defined it. Comes with a Letter of Authentication from Guaranteed Forensic Authenticators (GFA), along with the GFA guarantee of authenticity.

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