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
Why England Slept could well have been more disastrous in the long run, rather than castigating the appeasement policy which the British government pursued at the time. The book was originally intended to be no more than a college thesis. It was rated "magna cum laude" by Professor Henry A. Yeomans and "cum laude plus" by Professor Carl J. Friedrich. However, Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., keen to elevate his son's reputation, encouraged Kennedy to convert the thesis into book form and publish it. He then enlisted Henry Luce to write the foreword, and his friend Arthur Krock, former bureau chief of