JFK "Superman Comes to the Supermarket": A Pointed Portrait of a Political Campaign

With Hollywood good looks, boundless enthusiasm, and mesmeric media presence, John F. Kennedy was destined to capture the imaginations of the more than 70 million Americans who watched the nation’s first televised presidential debate. Just days after beating out Richard Nixon by the narrowest margin in history, Kennedy himself said, “It was the TV more than anything else that turned the tide.”

But one man begged to differ: writer Norman Mailer, who bragged that his pro-Kennedy treatise, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” had “won the election for Kennedy.” The article, published in Esquire magazine just weeks before polls opened, redefined political reporting with Mailer’s frank, first-person voice identifying Kennedy as the “existential hero” who could awaken the nation from its postwar slumber and conformist Eisenhower years. Both Kennedy and New Journalism had arrived.

To commemorate the centennial of Kennedy’s birth, TASCHEN presents this no-holds-barred portrait of Kennedy on his path to the White House alongside 300 photographs that bring the campaign and the candidate’s family to life. With featured photojournalists including such illustrious talents as Cornell Capa, Henri Dauman, Jacques Lowe, Arnold Newman, Lawrence Schiller, Paul Schutzer, Stanley Tretick, Hank Walker, and Garry Winogrand, this is a fascinating visual and literary record of the man who would lead America into the 1960s.

photo above © Stan Wayman/The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images