A time for greatness

Norman Mailer’s game-changing coverage of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign

With his Hollywood good looks, boundless enthusiasm, and mesmeric media presence, John F. Kennedy was destined to capture the imaginations of the more than 70 million Americans who watched the nation’s first televised presidential debate. Just days after beating out Richard Nixon by the narrowest margin in history, Kennedy himself said, “It was the TV more than anything else that turned the tide.”

But one man begged to differ: writer Norman Mailer, who bragged that his pro-Kennedy treatise, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” had “won the election for Kennedy.” Whether or not that was the case, the article, published in Esquire magazine just weeks before polls opened, did redefine political reporting and New Journalism with Mailer's frank, first-person voice identifying Kennedy as the “existential hero” who could awaken the nation from its postwar slumber and conformist Eisenhower years.

Now, TASCHEN reimagines this no-holds-barred portrait of one of America’s most revered presidents on his path to the White House, publishing Mailer’s essay in book form with over 300 photographs that bring the campaign and the candidate’s family to life. These images were captured by some of the great photojournalists of the day—Cornell Capa, Jacques Lowe, Paul Schutzer, Stanley Tretick, Hank Walker—and appear in this volume alongside many never-before-published photos by Garry Winogrand and Burton Berinsky, providing a fascinating look at the man who declared the ’60s “a time for greatness.