Textbooks Reassess Kennedy, Putting Camelot Under Siege Drew Angerer for The New York Times Since the 1980s, historians have concentrated on leaders" failings, as well as their successes. WASHINGTON - The President John F. Kennedy students learn about today is not their grandparents" J.F.K. In a high school textbook written by John M. Blum in 1968, Kennedy was a tragic hero, cut down too soon in a transformative presidency, who in his mere 1,000 days in office "revived the idea of America as a young, questing, progressive land, facing the future with confidence and hope." By the mid-"80s, that heady excitement was a distant memory, and Kennedy a diminished one. A textbook written in 1987 by James A. Henretta and several colleagues complained of gauzy "mythologizing" about his tenure and said the high hopes he generated produced only "rather meager legislative accomplishments." The first - and for many the last - in-depth lesson that American students learn about the 35th president comes from high school textbooks. And on the eve of the anniversary of his assassination 50 years ago, a review of more than two dozen written since then shows that the portrayal of him has fallen sharply over the years. In general, the picture has evolved from a charismatic young president who inspired youths around the world to a deeply flawed one whose oratory outstripped his accomplishments. Averting war in the Cuban missile crisis got less attention and respect. Legislative setbacks and a deepening commitment in Vietnam got more. The Kennedy-era glamour seemed more image than reality. For example, a 1975 high school text by Clarence Ver Steeg and Richard Hofstadter said that in his handling of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, "Kennedy's true nature as a statesman became fully apparent." In "A People and a Nation," they said his 1963 limited nuclear test ban treaty "was the greatest single step toward peace since the beginning of the Cold War." On civil rights, they said, his administration "did not receive congressional cooperation." Even so, they wrote, inaccurately, "buses, hotels, motels and restaurants were largely desegregated" in his presidency. Most of those changes came when the Civil Rights Act was signed by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1964. Using the same title in 1982, Mary Beth Norton and several others took a very different approach in a college textbook widely used today in Advanced Placement courses. They said he "pursued civil rights with a notable lack of vigor." They blamed him for the missile crisis, saying Cuban-Soviet fears of invasion were stoked by the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing and other United States moves against Cuba. They said Kennedy's real legacy was "a huge military expansion that helped goad the Russians into an accelerated arms race." In 2009, Joyce Appleby's "American Journey" said of the missile crisis: "While it seemed like a victory at the time, it left a Communist government intact just miles from the U.S. coastline. The humiliation of giving in also prompted the Soviets to begin the largest peacetime military buildup in history. There are a variety of reasons for the shift. First of all, the dazzle of the handsome young president and the assassination in Dallas elevated Kennedy to a heroic level impossible to maintain. Another is that new writers and editors added different perspectives. In particular, the Vietnam generation began writing and editing, and Kennedy's role in the war began to matter more. Also, his extramarital affairs became known, providing fodder for criticism. And the release of White House tapes, beginning in 1984, showed a coldly pragmatic politician, not the idealist on issues like civil rights whom people had heard about or imagined. Finally, the "80s saw a shift in textbook historiography. Gilbert Sewall, the director of the American Textbook Council, a nonprofit organization that reviews educational materials, said the older approach concentrated on successes in American history. In the "80s, he said, that was replaced by a "revisionist" approach that not only focused on injustices like the mistreatment of Indians but also highlighted flaws of those previously treated as heroic, like slaveholding among the founding fathers. "The Norton book brought this revisionism into a bright light," he said.