Three decades after Kennedy's death, Richard Reeves has written the first objective account of his three years in the White House. Based on previously unavailable White House files, letters and records, and hundreds of interviews, this book is a day-by-day narrative of what it was, and is, like to be President. This is the view from the centre of power during the years when the United States faced nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union and something close to racial war at home. It is also the story of a man who lived life as a race against boredom and death, thinking he would die young, needing large doses of drugs with side effects that included depression, paranoia, and compulsive sexual desire.