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Political historian Richard Reeves’s new book, Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House (Abrams)—published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s election as president of the United States—reveals an intimate account of a very public figure during his 1,036-day term. As seen through the lens of the first official White House photographer Cecil W. Stoughton, the rare archive of images (see V.F.’s slideshow) features the president during state dinners and cabinet meetings at the White House to family holidays and vacations at their private homes. Below, Reeves recalls when the camera caught the passing of the torch from 71-year-old Eisenhower to 43-year-old Kennedy, ushering in the days of “Camelot.” Listen to the podcast after the jump.

In 1948, in an attempt to drive out the remaining Allied troops in Germany, Soviet forces placed a blockade on Berlin, isolating the citizens in the city’s western sectors. In response, a group of heroic pilots—many of them veterans who had just returned home after World War II—were quickly mobilized and began to fly around-the-clock deliveries of food, fuel, and medicine. The Berlin Airlift, as it came to be known, sustained more than two million Berliners for almost a year. The brave and resolute response of these mainly American and British fliers—a tale of valor and compassion that has often been neglected by historians—is recounted in Richard Reeves’s captivating new book, Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949 (Simon & Schuster). In this exclusive audio excerpt, Reeves describes the chronic hunger and desolation that plagued Berlin before the airlift, and...