This lecture is part of a course from The Great Courses called The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History taught by Professor J. Rufus Fears. This course and over 300 other courses can be accessed with a subscription to Wondrium.
For people of a certain generation, the John F. Kennedy assassination changed America forever, prefiguring a loss of innocence that has lasted into the modern era. In this lecture from The Great Courses, Professor J. Rufus Fears assesses JFK’s short presidency, from how it offered a new era of hopeful ambition after World War II, to how he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis, to how he may have averted U.S. deepened involvement in Vietnam if he had lived. In the end, Fears believes that JFK’s death changed history for the worse, and in this lecture he makes a compelling case for what might have been.