Camera Girl
The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy
-
-
4.3 • 21 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
This revealing biography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy explores her early years as a writer, photographer, and ambitious young woman—offering a fresh portrait of the future First Lady before her life with John F. Kennedy.
“One of the most detailed, nuanced portraits of Jackie to date.” —The Washington Post
From New York Times bestselling author and presidential historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Camera Girl is an illuminating and “wholly refreshing” (David Maraniss) look at Jackie’s formative years in Paris, New York, and Washington, DC.
In the early 1950s, long before she became an international icon, Jacqueline Bouvier was a curious, driven young journalist working for the Washington Times-Herald as the “Inquiring Camera Girl.” Armed with her Graflex camera, she roamed the streets of the nation’s capital, capturing candid photographs and asking everyday Americans thoughtful, revealing questions—producing hundreds of widely read columns.
Drawing from these columns, previously unpublished writings, and original interviews with those who knew her, this richly detailed biography traces Jackie’s coming-of-age as she pursued a career, challenged expectations placed on women, and navigated love, ambition, and identity.
A vivid work of narrative nonfiction, this book offers a compelling look at midcentury America, women in journalism, and the making of one of the most fascinating and influential women of the 20th century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even before Jackie Bouvier married John F. Kennedy, she was a force to be reckoned with, according to this deeply researched biography. Spotlighting the formative period from 1949, when Jackie spent her junior year of college studying in France, to 1953, when she married JFK, historian Anthony (Why They Wore It) reveals a young woman of fierce intelligence, ambition, and persistence. After returning from France, she transferred from Vassar College to George Washington University, where she won a contest to become a junior editor in Vogue magazine's Paris office (she eventually turned the prize down). Early in her courtship with JFK (they were first introduced by mutual friends at a dinner party in 1951 but only started seriously dating after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952), he asked her to translate passages from a dozen "obscure, plodding" French books and compile the material into a report on the history of France's involvement in Indochina. "That Jack Kennedy asked her to do this, and the chance it offered her to demonstrate the power of her mind, was irresistible," Anthony writes. He also sheds intriguing light on Jackie's stint as a columnist for the Washington Times-Herald, the engagement she called off prior to marrying JFK, and her volatile and occasionally violent relationship with her mother. The result is a convincing and colorful reconsideration of a first lady known more for her style than her substance.
