In January 1953, the newly-elected Senator John F. Kennedy hired a young Nebraskan lawyer named, Theodore Sorensen as his legislative assistant. Sorensen quickly rose up the ranks in JFK's senate office, from research aide to speechwriter to campaigner and advisor, eventually working closely with JFK on his speeches and books, including "Profiles in Courage", and encouraging JFK's interest in the vice presidential nomination. Though JFK's pursuit of that nomination fell short at the 1956 Democratic Convention, he had emerged as a prominent national figure; and JFK and Sorensen traveled over the next three years to all fifty states exploring his prospects for the presidential nomination in 1960.Upon his election, Kennedy appointed Sorensen as his Special Counsel, a role that allowed him to serve as the President's own lawyer, speechwriter, and trusted confidante. Sorensen recounts in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK through some of the most dramatic moments in American history, including the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that Sorensen draft a letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation.
Sorensen was immersed in everything from civil rights to the decision to go to the moon, and he also had a hand in JFK's most important speeches.