Community Reviews
This biography of Jackie Kennedy Onassis was overly fawning, which is why I only gave it 3 stars. Donald Spoto's research was impressive if selective, and I ended up skipping a fair amount of material especially in his first section detailing her early years. I just didn't need to know what time the young Jacqueline Bouvier had French class in 8th grade, and other such details.
Still, I gained a great deal of appreciation for this First Lady's intellectual sophistication, self-discipline in many areas, and of course, her famous composure at the funeral of her husband, whose head was almost literally shot off right next to her. Her emotional trauma was unimaginable.
If the author hadn't overdone his praise of her on nearly every page, I could have taken much more of what he wrote about her at face value, particularly her abilities, talents and personal attributes, which he lauds to excess. I was intrigued, though, to learn that beyond her fashion-driven sense, Jackie also had good political instincts, providing the president with apt phrases to use in his speeches from Churchill as well as famed French philosophers, but it was Jackie who had read these books, not JFK. According to one source, it was Jackie who urged the president to sell wheat to the Russians in 1963, and it was Jackie who was credited (even by Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who worked as a special assistant to the president and later became JFK's official biographer) with having the unerring sense of the right next political step to take. I also hadn't realized Jackie's fluency with several languages. On the campaign trail in 1960, she spoke French at a Cajun festival in Louisiana, Italian to immigrants in Boston, and Spanish to Puerto Ricans in New York. Her charm, youth, and elegance became enormous political assets to John Kennedy, and his razor-thin electoral victory may well have been cinched by his wife's appeal.
Her husband was a notorious womanizer, though, (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), and clearly had no concept of sexual fidelity. Given his frequent bouts of illness due to his Addision's disease, as well as his frequent, severe back pain, it is astonishing how rabidly he pursued and bedded other women. He clearly did not fear exposure, even brazenly having one of his mistresses sign in as a White House visitor dozens of times while Jackie spent long weekends at one of their vacation homes. These frequent separations, along with Jackie's mind-boggling spending sprees on clothing (in 1962 she spent more than $121,400 on clothing, $21,000 more than JFK earned as president), may have been one way for her to cope with the loneliness of her marriage.
Though only First Lady for less than 3 years, Jackie undertook a huge job of "restoring" the White House to a former state of elegance. When she first toured her new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at just 31 years old, she described the bedroom curtains as "seasick green," the first floor hallway like "a dentist's office in bomb shelter." Raised in elegance and an avid admirer of the elegance of 18th century Europe, Mrs. Kennedy returned Thomas Jefferson's inkwell, Van Buren's Empire chairs, Washington's armchair, and Mrs. Grant's writing desk their rightful places in the White House.
Her glamour made the press go wild for any and all news about her, though she valued her privacy even as it slipped away. "Publicity in this era has gotten completely out of hand," she told press secretary Pierre Salinger, begging him to do a better job of protecting her and her children from the press.
The Kennedys lost their first baby to a stillbirth; a second pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Fortunately, Caroline and John were born healthy, but their last baby, Patrick, died just days after his premature birth. This additional loss seemed to devastate the president like nothing ever had before, and the author writes that this emotional trauma brought the couple to an emotional closeness that had so far eluded them. Tragically, it was just weeks before the assassination.
Jackie Kennedy had also met her second husband, the Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, in the 1950's, though Jackie's sister, Lee. The sisters accepted invitations to sail with the shipping tycoon on his gilded yacht, staffed with 60 servants. Yet one example of how Spoto protects Jackie's reputation is when he writes about her accepting an invitation from Onassis to spend a few weeks on the yacht with him just a few weeks after Patrick's death. JFK was against it for many reasons, not the least of which was how this would appear to the public if she indulged in such fabulous opulence at such a tender time. What Spoto doesn't write was that during this trip, the first photographs of Mrs. Kennedy sunbathing in a bikini were published by the foreign press, a groundbreaking image of a first lady that made the president livid. Spoto does acknowledge, however, that Jackie couldn't seem to resist the world of luxury, spending several aimless years after her husband's assassination immersed "in a world of luxurious indolence," going from resort to resort, in search of some form of escape. It was sad to think how empty her inner life must have been to have sought refuge in the world of materialism.
I never understood what made this still young, still vibrant woman marry the pudgy, unattractive, much older Onassis five years after losing John F. Kennedy. But Spoto's theory makes sense: Bobby Kennedy's assassination may have been the bridge too far for Jackie. She had been very close to Bobby, and seemed to want to escape America totally after losing her brother-in-law. But when Onassis himself died after only 6 years of marriage, Jackie acknowledged she could no longer live through men and needed to live her own authentic life.
This is when her early journalism training and insatiable appetite for reading became a saving grace, and Jackie O became an assistant editor at a New York publishing house. Spoto goes overboard here, though, quoting ad nauseum anyone who had worked with her who noted that she was a modest, hardworking woman who expected no favors and made her own coffee. "Jackie was, to put the matter briefly, a woman with an enormous capacity for learning, for appreciation, for hard work, for sheer elation -- she was, in other words, someone with a great soul."
You have to get through quite a lot of this sugary writing, and there are surely more balanced biographies of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, but I learned to appreciate this woman and her intelligence, complexity, and devotion to her children, Caroline and John. I also admired her love for the written word and her skill as an editor, pushing beyond her identity as one of the world's most famous and richest widows, but also a career woman in her own right.
Still, I gained a great deal of appreciation for this First Lady's intellectual sophistication, self-discipline in many areas, and of course, her famous composure at the funeral of her husband, whose head was almost literally shot off right next to her. Her emotional trauma was unimaginable.
If the author hadn't overdone his praise of her on nearly every page, I could have taken much more of what he wrote about her at face value, particularly her abilities, talents and personal attributes, which he lauds to excess. I was intrigued, though, to learn that beyond her fashion-driven sense, Jackie also had good political instincts, providing the president with apt phrases to use in his speeches from Churchill as well as famed French philosophers, but it was Jackie who had read these books, not JFK. According to one source, it was Jackie who urged the president to sell wheat to the Russians in 1963, and it was Jackie who was credited (even by Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who worked as a special assistant to the president and later became JFK's official biographer) with having the unerring sense of the right next political step to take. I also hadn't realized Jackie's fluency with several languages. On the campaign trail in 1960, she spoke French at a Cajun festival in Louisiana, Italian to immigrants in Boston, and Spanish to Puerto Ricans in New York. Her charm, youth, and elegance became enormous political assets to John Kennedy, and his razor-thin electoral victory may well have been cinched by his wife's appeal.
Her husband was a notorious womanizer, though, (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), and clearly had no concept of sexual fidelity. Given his frequent bouts of illness due to his Addision's disease, as well as his frequent, severe back pain, it is astonishing how rabidly he pursued and bedded other women. He clearly did not fear exposure, even brazenly having one of his mistresses sign in as a White House visitor dozens of times while Jackie spent long weekends at one of their vacation homes. These frequent separations, along with Jackie's mind-boggling spending sprees on clothing (in 1962 she spent more than $121,400 on clothing, $21,000 more than JFK earned as president), may have been one way for her to cope with the loneliness of her marriage.
Though only First Lady for less than 3 years, Jackie undertook a huge job of "restoring" the White House to a former state of elegance. When she first toured her new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at just 31 years old, she described the bedroom curtains as "seasick green," the first floor hallway like "a dentist's office in bomb shelter." Raised in elegance and an avid admirer of the elegance of 18th century Europe, Mrs. Kennedy returned Thomas Jefferson's inkwell, Van Buren's Empire chairs, Washington's armchair, and Mrs. Grant's writing desk their rightful places in the White House.
Her glamour made the press go wild for any and all news about her, though she valued her privacy even as it slipped away. "Publicity in this era has gotten completely out of hand," she told press secretary Pierre Salinger, begging him to do a better job of protecting her and her children from the press.
The Kennedys lost their first baby to a stillbirth; a second pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Fortunately, Caroline and John were born healthy, but their last baby, Patrick, died just days after his premature birth. This additional loss seemed to devastate the president like nothing ever had before, and the author writes that this emotional trauma brought the couple to an emotional closeness that had so far eluded them. Tragically, it was just weeks before the assassination.
Jackie Kennedy had also met her second husband, the Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, in the 1950's, though Jackie's sister, Lee. The sisters accepted invitations to sail with the shipping tycoon on his gilded yacht, staffed with 60 servants. Yet one example of how Spoto protects Jackie's reputation is when he writes about her accepting an invitation from Onassis to spend a few weeks on the yacht with him just a few weeks after Patrick's death. JFK was against it for many reasons, not the least of which was how this would appear to the public if she indulged in such fabulous opulence at such a tender time. What Spoto doesn't write was that during this trip, the first photographs of Mrs. Kennedy sunbathing in a bikini were published by the foreign press, a groundbreaking image of a first lady that made the president livid. Spoto does acknowledge, however, that Jackie couldn't seem to resist the world of luxury, spending several aimless years after her husband's assassination immersed "in a world of luxurious indolence," going from resort to resort, in search of some form of escape. It was sad to think how empty her inner life must have been to have sought refuge in the world of materialism.
I never understood what made this still young, still vibrant woman marry the pudgy, unattractive, much older Onassis five years after losing John F. Kennedy. But Spoto's theory makes sense: Bobby Kennedy's assassination may have been the bridge too far for Jackie. She had been very close to Bobby, and seemed to want to escape America totally after losing her brother-in-law. But when Onassis himself died after only 6 years of marriage, Jackie acknowledged she could no longer live through men and needed to live her own authentic life.
This is when her early journalism training and insatiable appetite for reading became a saving grace, and Jackie O became an assistant editor at a New York publishing house. Spoto goes overboard here, though, quoting ad nauseum anyone who had worked with her who noted that she was a modest, hardworking woman who expected no favors and made her own coffee. "Jackie was, to put the matter briefly, a woman with an enormous capacity for learning, for appreciation, for hard work, for sheer elation -- she was, in other words, someone with a great soul."
You have to get through quite a lot of this sugary writing, and there are surely more balanced biographies of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, but I learned to appreciate this woman and her intelligence, complexity, and devotion to her children, Caroline and John. I also admired her love for the written word and her skill as an editor, pushing beyond her identity as one of the world's most famous and richest widows, but also a career woman in her own right.
Show more
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.