Why men don’t read books anymore
When John F. Kennedy was dating Jacqueline Bouvier, he gave her two books. One was Pilgrim’s Way (1940) a memoir by the British spy and author John Buchan. The other was The Young Melbourne (1939) by Lord David Cecil, which describes the raffish exploits and political intrigues of a Whig aristocrat, and later prime minister, in the early 19th century. Quite what Jackie thought of this is unrecorded. Later President Kennedy told Life magazine what his favorite books were. Both of the titles above were in this proto-listicle, along with works about Byron, John C. Calhoun, Talleyrand and Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire.
