Description
Book SynopsisInga Arvad was the great love of President John F. Kennedy's life, and also Adolf Hitler's special guest at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She was an actress, a foreign correspondent, a popular Washington columnist, an explorer who lived among a tribe of headhunters, one of Hollywood's most influential gossip columnists, and a suspected Nazi spy. The latter nearly got Kennedy cashiered out of the Navy, but instead set in motion the chain of events that led to him becoming a war hero. Inga lived where gossip intersects with history, and her story, as told by author Scott Farris in Inga, is a rollicking story that demonstrates how private lives influence public events. It is also a Hitchcockian tale of how difficult it can be to prove innocence when unjustly accused, and how, as Inga phrased it, what was once a halo can slip down and become a hangman's noose. In addition to her romance with Kennedy and the attention of Hitler, Arvad married three times to an Egyptian diplomat who insisted th
Trade ReviewScott Farris pulls back the curtain on a fascinating era in American history and an intriguing woman who lived through it. Inga Arvad’s complexity is what makes the book so compelling. It seems she lived multiple lives and was part of the brightest and darkest moments in twentieth-century American history. -- Kate Andersen Brower, New York Times bestselling author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies and The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House
Scott Farris’s Inga is a jewel of a book—for Inga Arvad led a life that no novelist could have invented. Danish by birth, an immigrant American by choice, she bewitched men by her beauty, her journalistic flair, and that rarest of talents: to make others feel better about themselves than perhaps they had a right to. Inga’s extraordinary life story takes us across whole continents, featuring financiers, filmmakers, adventurers and politicians—including, most spectacularly, the young JFK. It is the stuff of legend—yet every word is true, told by a biographer of great sensitivity, narrative skill, and unremitting honesty. -- Nigel Hamilton, New York Times bestselling author of JFK: Reckless Youth and Commander in Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943
[A] a revealing and startling new book. . . . a great read in this stressful election season. . . . Hollywood’s leading men were mad for Inga. . . . a notorious, fascinating, and unpredictable life! . . . it would make a fabulous movie. -- Liz Smith, columnist
Scott Farris has written a meticulously researched, scrupulously sensitive account of Inga Arvad’s truly remarkable odyssey and her genuine romance with the young John F. Kennedy. A page-turner par excellence, Inga disentangles fact from fiction about the woman who enchanted everyone from Hitler to Hollywood stars. -- Andrew Nagorski, author of The Nazi Hunters and Hitlerland
In this beautifully detailed biography, Scott Farris shines a light on the complex life of Inga Arvad, a woman who received admiration from Hitler and sincere love from JFK. With exhaustive research and a fast-paced narrative, Farris reminds us that Arvad was more than just a pretty face, but a woman of tremendous influence and ability, one whose story deserves to be told. -- Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us From Missiles to the Moon to Mars and Cured: The People Who Defeated HIV
Here is the incredible, never before told story of the blonde bombshell who won the hearts of John F. Kennedy and Adolf Hitler. Inga was among the most compelling people of the twentieth century. Scott Farris reveals the secrets she tried to take to her grave in a masterful, suspenseful book that reads like a spy thriller but is, in fact, all true. I could not stop turning pages until the end. -- Chris DeRose, New York Times bestselling author of The Presidents’ War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War that Divided Them and Congressman Lincoln: The Making of America’s Greatest President
