Before Obama wrote
Dreams from My Father...
Before George x 2...
Before THE blue dress...
Before the Gipper...
Before 444 days in captivity...
Before Ford pardoned Nixon...
Before Marilyn sang "Happy Birthday"...
Before the scariest two weeks in October...
Before any of this happened, there was a Senator from Massachusetts. Though most of us know his book Profiles in Courage because it won a 1957 Pulitzer, fewer of us have heard of the book he published in 1960, The Strategy of Peace. It seems to be the obligatory pre-presidential campaign tome of its time (remember W's A Charge to Keep?).
This is what makes being a used book buyer so much fun — the copy of The Strategy of Peace that came to us the other week at the buying table in our downtown store was inscribed by John F. Kennedy, and laid in was a T.L.s (typed letter, signed) on United States Senate stationary.
To celebrate our acquisition, here's a trivia question: What movie star of the great Hollywood era owned a complete set of United States presidential signatures, from George Washington to FDR? Below is the catalog entry from one of the Sotheby's sales of her library.
Here's a clue: she was the mistress (today we'd say 'domestic partner') of a man for over 30 years, but she never married him.
The first person to post the correct answer will win whatever Powell's swag (shirt, pens, pint glass — who knows?) I can lift from the marketing department while they are out to "lunch."