A token gesture

Important backstory: I won a bunch of book tokens a few months ago. Today I decided to spend them. In fact I promised to bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend and oppose any foe to get a decent biography of JFK, one of my political heroes.

But despite my pledges in the previous paragraph, it really didn't go to plan. There wasn't a single book on JFK in Waterstones which didn't claim to offer "explosive new evidence" or "sensational new revelations".

Perhaps the authors of these books live very exciting lives and consequently have a low boredom threshold, but I find that I don't need shaky scoops to be captivated by JFK. The nuclear brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis on it's own should be enough to intrigue anyone. I guess it is possible that these authors routinely challenge countries to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the earth before this decade is out, because they appear to rank a tabloid obsession with JFK's love life above the theatre of this improbable challenge.

I bought Letter to a Christian Nation instead. Dogmatic atheism: better than shrill sensationalism any day of the week.