Profiles in Courage

Profiles in Courage is a 1956 volume of short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States senators. The book, authored by John F. Kennedy with Ted Sorensen as a ghostwriter, profiles senators who defied the opinions of their party and constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity as a result. It begins with a quotation from Edmund Burke on the courage of the English statesman Charles James Fox, in his 1783 "attack upon the tyranny of the East India Company" in the House of Commons, and focuses on mid-19th-century antebellum America and the efforts of senators to delay the American Civil War. Profiles in Courage was widely celebrated and became a bestseller. It includes a foreword by Allan Nevins.

John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, won the Pulitzer Prize for the work. However, in his 2008 autobiography, Kennedy's speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who was presumed as early as 1957 to be the book's ghostwriter, acknowledged that he "did a first draft of most chapters" and "helped choose the words of many of its sentences". Jules Davids, who was a history professor for Kennedy's wife Jacqueline when she was a student at George Washington University, is also acknowledged to have made key contributions to the historical research and organizational planning for the book.

In 1990, Kennedy's family created the Profile in Courage Award to honor individuals who have acted with courage in the same vein as those profiled in the book. The book also served as the basis for an American historical anthology series of the same name that was telecast weekly on NBC from November 8, 1964, to May 9, 1965.

Kennedy was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946, 1948, and 1950 from the state of Massachusetts. In 1952 and 1958, he was elected a senator from Massachusetts and served in the Senate until resigning after he was elected president in 1960. It was a passage from Herbert Agar's 1950 book The Price of Union about an act of courage by an earlier senator from Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, that gave Kennedy the idea of writing about senatorial courage. He showed the passage to Ted Sorensen and asked him to see if he could find some more examples. This Sorensen did, and eventually they had enough not just for an article, as Kennedy had originally envisaged, but a book. With help from research assistants and the Library of Congress, Sorenson wrote a first draft of the book while Kennedy was bedridden with Addison's disease and recovering from back surgery during 1954 and 1955.

Historian Timothy Naftali remarked that another motivation for Kennedy to write the book was his desire to improve his reputation after failing to vote to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. Naftali said it was Kennedy's ambition to become Vice President of the United States, and that he included Edmund Ross to appeal to Southern Democrats.

After its release on January 1, 1956, Profiles in Courage became a bestseller. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957, even though it was not one of the finalists forwarded to the prize board from the selection committee. Kennedy's father Joseph asked columnist Arthur Krock, his political adviser and a longtime member of the prize board, to persuade others to vote for it.

The book returned to the bestseller lists in 1961 after Kennedy became president and again in 1963 after he was assassinated.

Profiles in Courage was the basis of a television series of the same name that aired on the NBC network during the 1964–1965 television season.