Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abergen.

This day, May 6, 1957, the Pulitzer Prize for biography is awarded to a little-known author,

someone who would really go on to fade into literary obscurity, a man by the name of John F. Kennedy.

Oh, wait, no, I'm being told him reading here that Kennedy actually went on to do some

other stuff in his life, but interestingly enough,

this is the moment when Kennedy, a senator from Massachusetts, he wins a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Profiles and Courage, and it does earn him a fair amount of national recognition, which as we will discuss was kind of part of the goal, and he would of course continue to build

that reputation and become President Kennedy three and a half or so years later.

It is also maybe not a surprise that history has re-evaluated this book profiles and courage in

very interesting ways in the years since so here to discuss Kennedy's Pulitzer are as

always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

And this may be a Pulitzer Twofer.

We might touch on another very interesting Pulitzer story later, but let's talk about profiles and courage first.

Nicky, the book is the collection of profiles of what Kennedy has deemed courageous acts.

What else do we need to know about the basics and then we'll get into some of the stuff surrounding it?

So Kennedy kind of had courage as his brand when he came on the national stage he had fought in World War II.

He had been part of this moment where his ship that he was on had been blown up and he survived

at sea and so you would imagine a book called Profiles of Courageous

of Courageous Acts by Soldiers and Soldiers

...