Why England Slept US$40,000 in royalties for Kennedy. Those from the British sales were donated to Plymouth, England, recently bombed by the Luftwaffe, while Kennedy bought a Buick convertible with his income from the book's North-American sales. Joseph Kennedy had initially approached Harold Laski to write the book's foreword, but Laski declined, feeling that it was "the book of an immature mind; that if it hadn't been written by the son of a very rich man, he wouldn't have found a publisher." Why England Slept Why England Slept is the published version of a thesis written by John F. Kennedy while in his
Arms and the Covenant senior year at Harvard College, and in which he examined the reasons for the UK's lack of preparation. Originally titled "Appeasement in Munich", it was titled "Why England Slept" upon its 1940 publication. Arms and the Covenant Arms and the Covenant is a 1938 non-fiction book written by Winston Churchill. It was later published in the US as While England Slept; a Survey of World Affairs, 1932–1938. It highlighted the United Kingdom's lack of military preparation to face the threat of Nazi Germany's expansion and attacked the current policies of the UK government, led by his fellow Conservative Neville Chamberlain.