With more than forty thousand books already published about John F. Kennedy, it is perhaps not surprising that the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination would provoke additional works, whether scholarly (Robert Dallek, Camelot's Court (2014)), autobiographical (Clint Hill and Lisa Cubbin, Five Days in November (2014)), memorial (Gus Russo, Harry Moses, and Tom Brokaw, Where Were You? (2013)), or alternate-history (Jeff Greenfield, If Kennedy Lived (2013)). Two enjoyable new biographies, by Peter J. Ling and Mark White, are welcome additions to this body of literature. Both tackle a fascinating question in Kennedy studies: what accounts for the gulf between academic and popular assessments of JFK? Why do so many Americans, at least according to polling data, remember Kennedy as one of the greatest American Presidents, while scholarly evaluations of his presidency are much more critical and nuanced?

Peter J. Ling's John F. Kennedy is a cogent, well-written and engaging biography of JFK. It is the more comprehensive and synthetic of the two accounts. Mark White's Kennedy: A Cultural History of an American Icon, is a more focussed discussion of how JFK, with the collaboration of his father and wife, carefully crafted a specific image to appeal to the public. It is an engaging read not only for historians, amateur and professional alike, but also for students of communications, political science, or media management. For those looking to replicate JFK's political success, however, both authors underscore the crucial factors in his career: Joe Kennedy's money, and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's style and glamour.

Ling begins, as all Kennedy biographies should, with an analysis of how Rose and Joe Kennedy shaped their second son's values and ambitions, and how his older brother's premature death in World War II shifted the burdens of family expectation onto him. Ling successfully places Kennedy and his leadership into the appropriate historical context, particularly the Cold War, Democratic Party politics in the post-New Deal era, and the modern civil rights movement. His family's money, reputation, and support were crucial to his Congressional and Senate electoral victories. Though he served an undistinguished Senate term, when he launched his presidential campaign in 1960, he was already a media phenomenon. His father's money was once again the key to his nomination in 1960, while Lyndon Johnson's hold on the South, especially Texas, was the key to his victory over Richard Nixon.

As President, Kennedy highlighted the Cold War threat and the theme of sacrifice to garner support from the public and a recalcitrant Congress. Ling is measured in his assessment of Kennedy's management of the Cold War, noting that although he is often admired for breaking away from Eisenhower's committee-heavy decision-making structure and acting as his own Secretary of State, this personal control came at the expense of the presidency as an institution, offering fewer opportunities to manage and review policy. He praises Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis and the achievement of the test-ban treaty, but notes his culpability in provoking the former.

Fortunately, John F. Kennedy avoids a common pitfall of Kennedy studies, which is to prioritize analysis of his foreign policy above all else. Ling notes that although Kennedy is popularly remembered as a liberal icon, especially with regard to domestic social welfare issues, this is an inaccurate memorialization. A pragmatic politician and moderate Democrat rather than a committed social liberal, JFK was always a bit of an outsider within the Democratic Party and a “product of the conservative 1950s” (279). Ling particularly criticizes Kennedy's lack of support for the civil rights movement, which he viewed from an electoral and political standpoint rather than from one of social justice. Kennedy regarded seminal events such as the Birmingham church bombing and the March on Washington as threats to his domestic and international political image, and retained close ties to the southern white politicians with whom he was willing to cut backroom deals in order to avoid displays of violence. His priority was to restore order, not secure justice. Although JFK finally and reluctantly sent a civil rights bill to Congress in the summer of 1963, Ling argues that Burke Marshall, Robert F. Kennedy, and especially Lyndon Johnson were instrumental in persuading the President of its necessity. It was LBJ who used the slain President's memory to force the bill, and other social welfare reforms, through Congress in 1964.

Ling does not end his account in November 1963. He extends his analysis into the posthumous period, describing how Kennedy is remembered and what role the media play in that remembrance. Compellingly, he argues that as early as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination in 1988, the media's memorialization of Kennedy became self-referential, transforming into a celebration of journalism itself and the role that journalists played in the aftermath of the national tragedy.

Two notable features set John F. Kennedy apart from other biographies of JFK. The first is a chapter reviewing and evaluating the main conspiracy theories about the assassination, and the second is a comprehensive bibliographical essay. Both are skillfully researched and written, and useful for the scholar and Kennedy enthusiast alike. Myriad factors complicate any investigation of the Kennedy assassination, including institutional secrecy, the absence of usable evidence, and failures on the part of the police department in Dallas and the medical officers at Bethesda Naval Hospital who conducted the slain President's autopsy. If one accepts Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin – as Ling seems to – it seems most likely that he was working, either knowingly or unknowingly, at the behest of a Cuban group, either pro- or anti-Castro, with some organized-crime connection. No wonder Ling concludes that the historian is “unable to say definitively who murdered John F. Kennedy” (220).

Mark White's Kennedy: A Cultural History of an American Icon takes an innovative approach beyond standard biography. This “cultural history” ascribes the vast gap between popular and scholarly views of John Kennedy to “the allure of JFK's image” (2). White traces the development of that image during Kennedy's lifetime and after his death. He identifies its major components, the extent to which JFK shaped it himself and how much Joe Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy shaped it, how it changed over time, and how it diverged from “the reality of the man and his presidency” (2). This image was complex and diverse, and part of the secret to its success was that it combined the traditional with the new in important ways.

First, Kennedy was a symbol of family life, both through his family of origin and especially after his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. At the same time, he possessed an innate erotic appeal that served him particularly well in the media. Subsequent revelations of Kennedy's philandering have not diminished public affection for him, White argues, because they fit in with this eroticized image. The duality of his image as both sex symbol and family man explains why so many found, and continue to find, Kennedy appealing.

Through Profiles in Courage and his wife's patronage of the arts, Kennedy also cultivated a reputation as a man of intellectual and cultural refinement, even though he was not a very cultured man. Boundless self-confidence, an able staff, and, crucially, the contributions of Jacqueline Kennedy allowed JFK to pass himself off as an intellectual.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy added two additional elements to this powerful image, the idea that the Kennedys were “America's royalty,” and the notion of JFK as a man of faith. This is another case where the hybridity of his image helped broaden his appeal. He was a young, sexy, agent of change, but also husband of a beautiful, pregnant wife and doting father to a toddler, photographed attending church on Sundays.

White fully fleshes out the post-assassination development of the Kennedy image. He credits Jacqueline Kennedy's “Camelot” interview with Theodore White in Life, and her subsequent management of her late husband's reputation, for cultivating the image of a sophisticated, erudite leader. She oversaw the naming of important cultural and intellectual icons, like Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Center, after the slain President, and worked to ensure the grandeur of the Kennedy Library. She fostered the simple but powerful idea that America would have been greater had he lived. Depictions of Kennedy in film and television from the 1970s through today perpetuate these themes.

White implicitly defends Kennedy from accusations of prioritizing style over substance. The situation is more complicated, White argues. He credits Kennedy with recognizing, and adapting to, the ways in which politics was changing, particularly the growing importance of television. Indeed, White concludes that Kennedy's skillful and prescient creation of such a powerful image was “his greatest, most enduring accomplishment” (144) – one that, he suggests, no other leader in history has matched.

Although each anniversary of the Kennedy assassination is less resonant with the progression of time, many Americans continue to hold him in high regard as one of their greatest Presidents. To explain this phenomenon, both of these studies point to the fact of his early, tragic death and the lasting Kennedy mystique. “The death defined the life,” as Ling so aptly begins his account (1).