When his Choate School classmates voted him "Most Likely to Succeed," Jack Kennedy thought they were joking. So did nearly everybody else, including his teachers and the members of his family. From then on, however, Jack began to demonstrate the elements of success which characterized his life.

As a boy, Jack was freckle-faced, skinny, plagued by illness, and overshadowed by his older brother, Joe, Jr. Fortunately, despite these handicaps, he was spurred onward by his father's proud ambitions and by his own singular competitive spirit.

Out of grim determination, this boy, beset by many difficulties, grew up to become one of the most successful men who ever lived—champion sailor and swimmer, war hero, best-selling author, Pulitzer Prize winner, Congressman, Senator, and the youngest President of the United States ever elected.

As a boy, Jack Kennedy was restless, intensely curious and courageous. From his grandfather Fitzgerald, former mayor of Boston, he inherited his love of politics, his wit and charm. The devout faith of his mother, the rugged will-to-win of his father also influenced him to succeed.

In his tragically brief lifetime, President John F. Kennedy opened up a New Frontier for America and the world. It was a frontier of mind and heart, where liberty and equality for all peoples and the hope of peace would someday become an actuality.

One of the great tragedies of his untimely death was the fact that he had little opportunity to carry out his dreams. He was not only a man of ideas but also a man of action. Had he lived, there is little question that many of his plans and deeds would have brought new hope to a restless world.

Lucy Post Frisbee has written this book from intimate knowledge of both the area and era of Kennedy's career. She has lived in Boston and summered on Cape Cod. A frequent resident of the nation's capital due to her husband's Air Force duties, she now lives in near-by McLean, Virginia, with Colonel Frisbee and their four sons.

Mrs. Frisbee's painstaking research has been conducted through personal conversations and correspondence not only with members of the President's immediate family but also with his boyhood chums and lifelong friends, with former schoolmasters at Canterbury and Choate, and finally with varied government officials and White House representatives. 

From the dust jacket