Signed book: Profiles in Courage. Early printing with ‘D-F’ date code. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1956. Hardcover with dust jacket, 6 x 8.5, 266 pages. Boldly signed and inscribed on the first free end page in fountain pen, "To Bob Thompson—with esteem and warmest regards from his friend—John Kennedy." Autographic condition: fine, with a small adhesive remnant to the right edge of the signed page. Book condition: VG/G, with several splits, repairs, and edge chips to the jacket.
Robert E. Thompson (1921-2003) was a top political writer and Washington journalist who worked as John F. Kennedy's press secretary in the late 1950s, quitting just prior to the then-Senator's presidential campaign. The men met through Robert F. Kennedy, who had befriended Thompson during the McClellan Committee hearings into labor racketeering. It was at a party in 1958 at RFK’s Hickory Hill estate that JFK asked Thompson to become his press secretary. One of Thompson’s major contributions to his new boss’s 1958 senatorial reelection campaign was a movie he put together entitled ‘The U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy Story,’ which was broadcast on Massachusetts television. Kennedy later remarked that ‘it was the best thing (he) had in the campaign.’ Thompson left Kennedy’s staff in 1959 and joined the Washington Bureau of the New York Daily News, where he eventually became their White House correspondent and was assigned to cover the new American President: John F. Kennedy.
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