Rare unsigned book from the personal collection of Jaqueline Kennedy — Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy. Washington, DC: privately-printed, 1961. Gilt-embossed hardcover with matching slipcase, 7 x 10, eight pages, the inside front cover bearing an affixed Sotheby’s label, indicating that this book was auctioned at their "The Estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis” sale on April 23-26, 1996. Book condition: NF/None in a VG+ case.
This is one of an unspecified limitation (generally believed to be about 100) of specially bound copies of President Kennedy's inaugural address, many of which were given to his closest friends and staffers as Christmas gifts. In the address, Kennedy went over the major themes of his campaign and famously urged the American people, 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.' A defining speech of the 20th century, historians regard it as the most significant inaugural since that of Lincoln, given from the same portico a hundred years earlier.
