Jackie: Public, Private, Secret
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4.5 • 125 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jackie, Janet & Lee comes a fresh and often startling look at the life of the legendary former first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Based on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, and lovers over a thirty-year period—as well as previously unreleased material from the JFK Library—Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli paints an unforgettable new portrait of a woman whose flaws and contradictions only serve to make her even more iconic. “I have three lives,” Jackie told a former lover, “public, private and secret.” In this revealing biography, readers will become intimately familiar with all three.
New insights from the book include:
· Jackie’s cold feet before her wedding to Jack Kennedy and her secret plan to avoid moving into the White House with him.
· Jackie's plan to meet with the woman with whom her husband, Aristotle Onassis, was again having an affair, Maria Callas…and why, in the end, she decided against it.
· The truth about the nude photos of Jackie which scandalized her in the 1970s…and which family member had betrayed her by selling them.
· Her unusual relationship with Maurice Templesman, which was never what outsiders believed it to be.
· The never-before-reported, last-ditch efforts to save Jackie’s life with experimental cancer treatments, and the doctor who wouldn’t risk jail time in order to treat her.
Decades after her death and over sixty years after the assassination of President Kennedy, Jackie delivers the last word on one of the most famous women in the world.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis lived a very public life as the First Lady, the wife of a famous business magnate, and a style icon. But as prolific celebrity biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli explores in this compelling and enlightening biography, the most fascinating aspects of Jackie’s identity were quite private. Taraborrelli examines many candid episodes from the famous woman’s life, including multiple family dramas, her PTSD following her husband’s assassination, and her many secret loves, friendships, and feuds—and each story is full of rich commentary from those who knew her firsthand. What emerges is a revealing portrait of the brave, bold, sometimes flawed individual who captivated the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis once told a lover that she had three lives ("public, private, and secret"), according to this gossipy biography. Drawing on interviews and previously unpublished material from the JFK Library, Taraborrelli (Jackie, Ethel, and Joan) documents Jackie's reservations about marrying JFK when he was a senator from Massachusetts; the background to the 1972 publication of nude photographs taken of her years earlier by a paparazzo (it was arranged in revenge by the children of her husband Aristotle Onassis); the nature of her relationship with diamond merchant Maurice Templesman, which was more about companionship than sex; and the fruitless efforts to save her life with an experimental cancer treatment. According to Taraborrelli, Jackie suffered nightmarish post-traumatic stress throughout her life after JFK's assassination, causing her to seek out therapy, which led to self-study and self-actualization. "Her life had been filled with as much trauma as reward, all playing out before the whole world," writes Taraborrelli. Readable and deeply researched, it's a refreshingly complex portrait of a woman too often defined by her relationships with men. Readers who enjoyed the author's other Kennedy biographies will not be able to put this down. (July)
Customer Reviews
Ok book, vile subject
This book is well written, however, it reveals its subject, Jackie Kennedy, as a disgracefully vain and self centered brat who never grew up and considered the modern day equivalent of 2 million dollars a year “inadequate” to maintain her shallow lifestyle. Ew. Just no. Life is too short to waste on reading books on pariahs such as the Kennedy/Auchincloss families. There’s no curse on them, just Karma.