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Overview
Drawing from recently declassified top-secret material, as well as revelatory eyewitness accounts, Secret Service records, and Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal letters, bestselling biographer Barbara Leaming answers the question: what was it like to be Mrs. John F. Kennedy during the dramatic thousand days of the Kennedy presidency? Brilliantly researched, Leaming’s poignant and powerful chronicle illuminates the tumultuous day-to-day life of a woman who entered the White House at age thirty-one, seven years into a complex and troubled marriage, and left at thirty-four after her husband's assassination. Revealing the full story of the interplay of sex and politics in Washington, Mrs. Kennedy will indelibly challenge our vision of this fascinating woman, and bring a new perspective to her crucial role in the Kennedy presidency.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780743227490 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Free Press |
| Publication date: | 10/02/2002 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Sales rank: | 1,079,673 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.44(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Author's Note
Had it not been for the fact that Jacqueline Kennedy was married to the President of the United States, it is unlikely that a single book about her would have been written. And yet, in the dozens of books about her, specific details of that presidency have been largely excluded. Even more striking, and of greater consequence, is the fact that the histories of John F. Kennedy's presidency are comparably flawed, missing as they do the story of Jacqueline Kennedy and her crucial role. In an effort to fill the gap, I have tried to tell her story in those years with as much attention to the presidency as to the events of her private life. The role of Jacqueline Kennedy is probably less understood than any other part of the Kennedy presidency; equally, her personal story cannot be grasped without seeing it in the context of the unfolding events of one of the twentieth century's most dramatic presidencies. Her life was changed by historical events in ways she had never anticipated. She, in turn, influenced certain of those events in ways that until now have remained largely unexamined.
The chronicle of any presidency is incomplete without a consideration of the president's private life. That is even more true in the case of John F. Kennedy, because his private life repeatedly put his presidency at risk. Oddly, Kennedy's detractors — those seeking to portray his so-called dark side — have largely excluded Jackie from their versions of events, every bit as much as his apologists have. I would argue that one can come to terms neither with Kennedy's darker aspects nor with his fundamental decency — nor, ultimately, with what was perhaps his most stunning unfinished achievement, his own personal struggle against unimaginable odds for a moral compass — without being intimately familiar with the unusual nature of his life with her.
What follows is Jacqueline Kennedy's story in the White House years told fully for the first time in the larger and inseparable context of the presidency. It is also, in important ways, the story of the Kennedy presidency, with a tremendous missing piece filled in. To view the presidency afresh, rather than start with published memoirs and established histories, I have reconstructed the story from scratch, using the vast documentation produced during the Kennedy administration: letters, memos, transcripts, reports, diaries, and other primary sources. Using Secret Service reports of presidential movements, appointment books, gate logs, and other records, I have tracked the President and First Lady, as well as their intimates and associates, on a day-by-day, often minute-by-minute basis. With the aid of transcripts and minutes of meetings, I listened to what was actually said, by Kennedy himself and by key participants, during the many tumultuous events that made this presidency such an exciting one. I followed the President afterward, whether upstairs to the family quarters or to the Kennedys' weekend retreat in the country, to see him unwind with his wife and close friends. I considered what certain of those friends had to say about the Kennedys, whether in letters or diaries of the period, or in interviews. And I listened carefully to Jackie's own voice, in letters and other documents.
No experience can have been more valuable to me than the opportunity to study Jackie's extraordinarily moving, uncharacteristically frank correspondence with Harold Macmillan, written after her husband's death. As I encountered the passionate, emotionally turbulent, unguarded voice in those letters, and made sense of the allusions, both hers and Macmillan's, to certain defining events in the presidency, I was struck by how little has ever really been known about Jacqueline Kennedy or her intimate life with Jack in the White House years. In telling that story, it is my hope that, as I did, the reader will come to a better and more sympathetic understanding of two flawed but good and remarkable people, both of whom, each in his or her own way, came to exemplify the virtue both valued most: courage.
Copyright © 2001 by Barbara Leaming
Table of Contents
| Author's Note | ix | |
| Chapter 1 | Modus Vivendi | 1 |
| Chapter 2 | The Presidency Begins | 33 |
| Chapter 3 | Tell Me About Macmillan | 51 |
| Chapter 4 | A Family Drama | 71 |
| Chapter 5 | The Magic Is Lost | 89 |
| Chapter 6 | Hall of Mirrors | 111 |
| Chapter 7 | In Her Own Right | 130 |
| Chapter 8 | Goddess of Power | 173 |
| Chapter 9 | Eyes in the Portraits | 194 |
| Chapter 10 | A Critical Moment | 217 |
| Chapter 11 | Valediction | 237 |
| Chapter 12 | Indiscretion | 256 |
| Chapter 13 | Private Grief | 286 |
| Chapter 14 | A Study in Betrayal | 303 |
| Chapter 15 | Alone | 328 |
| Chapter 16 | My Dear Friend | 351 |
| Epilogue | 356 | |
| Acknowledgments | 361 | |
| Notes on Sources | 365 | |
| Index | 393 |
Interviews
Exclusive Author Essay
On November 25, 1963, in Washington, D.C., 34-year-old Jacqueline Kennedy walked behind her husband's coffin at the head of a procession that included the new president, Lyndon Johnson, French president Charles de Gaulle, the Soviet emissary, Anastas Mikoyan, and leaders and representatives of 92 nations.
Three days previously in Dallas, Texas, Jacqueline Kennedy had been inches from death, as a sniper's bullet shattered her husband's head while she fought to pull him down to safety after an earlier gunshot. Still, back in Washington, she had declared that, at her husband's funeral, she would follow his coffin on foot through the wide streets, which suddenly seemed so full of menace. She had insisted that she must "walk behind Jack," despite the desperate pleas of U.S. government officials that her plan was too dangerous. Warned that further violence might erupt, she made it clear that she would not permit terror to rule. In the hours that led up to the procession, there were numerous assassination threats on the world leaders assembled in Washington. Nonetheless, Johnson, de Gaulle, and others, following her example, insisted that they wanted to "walk with Mrs. Kennedy." That morning she, whose husband admired courage above all virtues, symbolized courage to a shaken and frightened world.
To anyone who saw Jacqueline Kennedy march behind President Kennedy's coffin, it would have been hard to imagine that, three years before, she had arrived at the White House plagued by insecurity, defeated by a difficult marriage, and determined as far as possible to play no active role in the presidency. How had this young woman who, only a thousand days prior to the assassination, had been filled with trepidation that she was inadequate to her responsibilities, become the emblematic figure who offered the American people a much-needed image of strength in the face of violence, of dignity and stability in the face of chaos? How did the shy, self-doubting 31-year-old of Inauguration Day become the powerful presence who comforted and inspired a nation in its time of tragedy? That is the story I have tried to tell in Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years. Using letters, diaries, and a wide range of other primary documentation, as well as interviews with Kennedy friends and associates, I have reconstructed Jacqueline Kennedy's day-by-day life, both public and private, as First Lady. Her story is a shocking, often-painful journey, one I hope readers will find as fascinating and deeply moving as I did. (Barbara Leaming)
Introduction
Author's Note
Had it not been for the fact that Jacqueline Kennedy was married to the President of the United States, it is unlikely that a single book about her would have been written. And yet, in the dozens of books about her, specific details of that presidency have been largely excluded. Even more striking, and of greater consequence, is the fact that the histories of John F. Kennedy's presidency are comparably flawed, missing as they do the story of Jacqueline Kennedy and her crucial role. In an effort to fill the gap, I have tried to tell her story in those years with as much attention to the presidency as to the events of her private life. The role of Jacqueline Kennedy is probably less understood than any other part of the Kennedy presidency; equally, her personal story cannot be grasped without seeing it in the context of the unfolding events of one of the twentieth century's most dramatic presidencies. Her life was changed by historical events in ways she had never anticipated. She, in turn, influenced certain of those events in ways that until now have remained largely unexamined.
The chronicle of any presidency is incomplete without a consideration of the president's private life. That is even more true in the case of John F. Kennedy, because his private life repeatedly put his presidency at risk. Oddly, Kennedy's detractors -- those seeking to portray his so-called dark side -- have largely excluded Jackie from their versions of events, every bit as much as his apologists have. I would argue that one can come to terms neither with Kennedy's darker aspects nor with his fundamental decency -- nor, ultimately, with what was perhaps his most stunning unfinished achievement, his own personal struggle against unimaginable odds for a moral compass -- without being intimately familiar with the unusual nature of his life with her.
What follows is Jacqueline Kennedy's story in the White House years told fully for the first time in the larger and inseparable context of the presidency. It is also, in important ways, the story of the Kennedy presidency, with a tremendous missing piece filled in. To view the presidency afresh, rather than start with published memoirs and established histories, I have reconstructed the story from scratch, using the vast documentation produced during the Kennedy administration: letters, memos, transcripts, reports, diaries, and other primary sources. Using Secret Service reports of presidential movements, appointment books, gate logs, and other records, I have tracked the President and First Lady, as well as their intimates and associates, on a day-by-day, often minute-by-minute basis. With the aid of transcripts and minutes of meetings, I listened to what was actually said, by Kennedy himself and by key participants, during the many tumultuous events that made this presidency such an exciting one. I followed the President afterward, whether upstairs to the family quarters or to the Kennedys' weekend retreat in the country, to see him unwind with his wife and close friends. I considered what certain of those friends had to say about the Kennedys, whether in letters or diaries of the period, or in interviews. And I listened carefully to Jackie's own voice, in letters and other documents.
No experience can have been more valuable to me than the opportunity to study Jackie's extraordinarily moving, uncharacteristically frank correspondence with Harold Macmillan, written after her husband's death. As I encountered the passionate, emotionally turbulent, unguarded voice in those letters, and made sense of the allusions, both hers and Macmillan's, to certain defining events in the presidency, I was struck by how little has ever really been known about Jacqueline Kennedy or her intimate life with Jack in the White House years. In telling that story, it is my hope that, as I did, the reader will come to a better and more sympathetic understanding of two flawed but good and remarkable people, both of whom, each in his or her own way, came to exemplify the virtue both valued most: courage.
Copyright © 2001 by Barbara Leaming