Steven Levingston — Twilight of Camelot
Historian Steven Levingston chronicles President Kennedy's grief through the tragic story of his infant son Patrick, who lived only two days.
Why we picked this
A presidential biography told through the most private kind of loss — the death of a child. Levingston uses two days in August 1963 to reveal the man behind the myth.
Steven Levingston presents a deeply personal account of President John F. Kennedy through a lens rarely explored in presidential biography. Rather than the Cuban Missile Crisis or the space race, Levingston focuses on the death of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who lived just two days in August 1963, to illuminate the private grief and emotional landscape of a president known more for his public charisma.
The book traces how this loss reshaped Kennedy in his final months — a president forced to confront vulnerability at the height of his power. Levingston, a veteran journalist and historian, brings archival depth and narrative intimacy to a story most Americans know only as a footnote.
At Politics and Prose’s Connecticut Avenue location. Free admission.