Author James Douglas will speak on his most recent book, JFK And The Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, which recently won the Catholic Press Association's 2nd place award for Biographies.

What does it mean to be transformed? What events transform a political leader, a president? In his new book from Orbis Books, James Douglass traces the “turning” of President John F. Kennedy from the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, right to the week of his death as he is transformed from a conventional Cold Warrior to someone determined to pull the world back from the edge of apocalypse.

Douglass views Kennedy’s change from a contemplative perspective, particularly attuned to the grave moral and spiritual matters at stake. President Kennedy, as it turns out, saw his mission in similar terms. Those who plotted his death were determined to kill the vision. Only by unmasking these forces of the “Unspeakable,” Douglass argues, can we free ourselves and our country to pursue that vision of peace.