Biographies: Jacqueline Kennedy

Good books about Jacqueline Kennedy:

Grace And Power, by Sally Bedell Smith

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life, by Donald Spoto

JackieStyle, by Pamela Clarke Keogh

Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History Of The Kennedy Years, by Barbara Leaming

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GRACE AND POWER tells about the years of the administration, almost exclusively, and concentrates more on public life and issues than some Kennedy biographies. It talks about Pres. and Mrs. Kennedy, both equally and when you read it you become re-fascinated by the issues and problems of the early 1960s -- a time which seems at once a thousand years ago, and -- last week.

Spoto's book, JBKO: A LIFE, is very personal, about Jackie, birth to passing, and her family's background. This book gives the reader a very strong sense of an individual's journey and struggle to live productively and in the way she wanted to live -- the effort, impediments, and successes. This book tells us more about Jackie's publishing career than most biographies of her. More years of her life were spent in publishing than with either of her husbands, but these years are not often emphasized by popular media because there's no flamboyant spousal behavior or projected shopping fantasies which are easily hooked into by the shallow imagination.

JACKIESTYLE is about the -- well, it's about the stuff. The clothes, the jewelry, the restored historical White House, the Manhattan apartment, the designers, the hair, make-up, style evolution, and influences. And it's about Jackie Kennedy the person, as well. Very instructive.

And Barbara Leaming's book, MRS. KENNEDY, is about mostly the White House years, though there's pre-1960 background, and it approaches the story of Jackie K. with a specific thesis about the Kennedy marriage. It's interesting, thick with emotional detail, and practical detail gleaned from Secret Service logs which were opened after years of being off-limits. Along with the intense emotional, personal components, there are exciting, multi-faceted descriptions of public events and crises during JFK administration: Cuban missile crisis, Bay-Pigs, civil rights -- a riot on a Southern college campus. The decision-making process, the arguments, difficulties, and the way they found direction, at the time, are detailed in a play-by-play fashion which anyone could enjoy reading.

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Part of my enjoyment of reading about Jackie Kennedy Onassis' publishing career -- from late 1970s to her passing in '94 -- is that it took place in New York City, one of my favorite places. A friend of mine said it was "an iconic place" and I cannot put that any better.

Some of my favorite movies which I saw at an impressionable age were Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan -- they heavily influenced my view of a lot of things and even the way I experienced life, no matter where I was -- and I was rarely IN New York City, at all. (I guess you call that a "New York state of mind"...?)

I think of the New York City of Woody Allen; and I think of the New York City of Jackie Kennedy. Were they the same? Was one less funny than the other? Was one more glamorous than the other?

I think they are more similar than different: populated by cozy, fabulous book stores; interesting, purposeful walks all over the city's sidewalks; excellent restaurants, like Elaine's, Russian Tea Room, and miscellaneous diners with overstuffed booth-seats, where one can order pastrami with mayonnaise on white bread if one wants to.

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