America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - Hardcover

Bradford, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670874221 ISBN 13: 9780670874224

Publisher: Viking, 2000

Synopsis

Jackie Bouvier's privileged upbringing instilled rigid self-control, while her expedient marriage into the overwhelming Kennedy clan consolidated her determination. Revealing new testimonies from many of the couple's friends show the profound complexities both of this apparently very public relationship, and of her controversial marriage to Onassis. Here it is, the private Jackie - neglected wife, vigilant mother, obsessive shopper and working widow - whose contradictory and fascinating nature is illuminated by all that Bradford has discovered.

About this title

Review:

Fresh from her well-received life of Queen Elizabeth II, the historian and biographer Sarah Bradford turns her hand to America's own answer to royalty, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Painstakingly detailed, impressively fair, the result is the most definitive account yet of a woman who captured the imagination of the American public like no First Lady before or after her. Bradford seems to have interviewed almost everyone who had ever been intimate with Onassis, including George Plimpton, Gore Vidal, Joan Kennedy and even a few ex-lovers. Most notably of all, Jackie's sister Lee Radziwill speaks with unexpected frankness about the mixture of rivalry and affection that marked their relationship since childhood. Jackie-lovers, take note: this is no hagiography, and its subject certainly comes off as no saint. As gracious as this American icon could be, she also had moments of coldness and even greed, including a particularly shocking moment by the bedside of Aristotle Onassis's dying son. Yet, in the end, non-airbrushed anecdotes like these only serve to make this most private of public figures even more fascinating.

Jackie was, as Bradford writes, "a complex woman of many facets, concealed insecurities and intricate defence mechanisms, a strong urge toward the limelight contrasting with a desire for privacy and concealment.... Behind the mask of beauty and fame lay a shrewd mind, a ruthless judgment of people, antennae finely turned to any sign of pretentiousness or pomposity, and a wry, even raunchy sense of humour". The figure who emerges from subsequent pages is as compelling as the heroine of any novel, and it is to Bradford's credit that she doesn't seem to have fallen completely under her subject's spell. Her approach is sympathetic, but never fawning; candid, but never sensationalist. For those who are curious not about Jackie's glamour but about its source, America's Queen offers an unprecedented look at the flesh-and-blood woman behind the Camelot myth. --Carlotta DeWitt

Review:

The Kennedys were - to a very great extent still are - America's Royal Family. Like the real thing, their reputation has taken a considerable bashing in the last couple of decades: JFK using the White House as a knocking shop; Edward's drunkenness and womanising, not to mention Chappaquiddick and Monroe's death. Jacqueline Kennedy first blotted her copybook when she married Onassis, a move that was seen as having more to do with avarice than love. But she was largely forgiven - after all, she had suffered for her country. But her married life accounts for only 17 years in total, and Bradford here examines the not uneventful balance of her existence. The grieving widow, the working mother, the greedy shopaholic, the intensely private public figure who, from 1963 until her death, never gave an interview. Yet even her detractors would testify to her loyalty and generosity of spirit, setting her faults against her difficult childhood and the tragedies of later life. The publishers are keeping the content securely under wraps but they are saying Bradford draws on interviews with those who knew Jackie and Jack which paint "a chilling picture of rich people running a country". There are, apparently, many revelations about her personal life, and Bradford sheds new light on the question of Onassis' will, over which Jackie and her stepchildren argued in the funeral cortege.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0670874221
• ISBN 13: 9780670874224
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 704