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Dangerous Friends: How The Friendship with Joe McCarthy Blighted the Lives of John & Robert Kennedy

June 8, 2021

Prize-winning author David Nasaw explores a complex friendship between the Kennedy men – Joe, Jack and Bobby – that began in the early 1950s and included jobs, money, romance and politics.

Nasaw weaves the story into Senate and White House deliberations during McCarthy’s “reign of terror” investigating alleged communism in America. The influence of that friendship still reverberates today.

This lecture was part of a series sponsored by the Free Library of Philadelphia entitled “Trust No One: Joe McCarthy and the Politics of Fear.”
David Nasaw is an American author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural and social history of early 20th Century America. He recently retired from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he was the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History.

He has written the definitive biographies of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph P. Kennedy, and most recently, “The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War” (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318732/the-last-million-by-david-nasaw/). He holds a PhD from Columbia University.