Customer Reviews

Jackie: A Legend Defined

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Jackie, a Legend Defined, gives us the most salient features of the life of a woman whose influence upon Americans will endure. Anyone whose awareness of the Jackie phenomenon dates back to the sixties will find this cursory examination of her life adequate, perhaps. For the younger student, there is a rather good bibliography referencing both periodicals and books. Somehow, her sophistication spoke to a people who could now travel to Europe and the rest of the world by jet, while at the same time be terrorized by the threat of global nuclear war. Jackie, poised and focussed equestrian, seemed to embody the cool which we needed to live our lives in the shadow of threat. She knew the lessons good breeding was supposed to teach, but her own childhood had been somewhat chaotic. She made up for it with her intensity, composed of the Latin virtue of a sanguine disposition and the ability to focus her energies on the pursuit of excellence. Never mind that being First Lady could only be at most an eight-year reign. She set a course for the rest of us, in that she drew into the White House the artists who have been welcomed there ever since. She raised an historical consciousness with her restoration there, and went on in later life to fight for preservation in New York City. The battles she chose were few, but crucial. Her editorship at Viking and then at Doubleday gave scope to her discernment and to her ability to connect with people in the arts. Somehow, she once again embodied an age - that of the independent professional woman, who is a survivor. In the beginning, her mother and father had been part of an America which imitated Europe (especially England) in its faith in blood-lines and privilege. The "Lee's of Maryland", no relation to those of Virginia, were not planters but supplanters. The Bouvier's had been peasants in France. But here, their descendant Jacqueline, had redefined class. It is something revolutionary, and it is there for anyone with the nerve, the brains and the grace to have it. No wonder that to so many aspiring African-Americans Jackie was, as Tina Turner put it, the reigning Queen. No wonder, as the book spells out, the American public went mad for her relics. But relics or no, to understand her as a whole, as this book attempts, is an important step in the education of taste. In the end, her stay was too brief, like a career of a great diva. She bowed off the stage even before her Victorian-era mother-in-law, who at 103 watched her funeral on television. She left just enough clues for us to feel that we knew her. She seemed to define herself in characteristically bold, telling strokes. She is the persona of the latter half of the twentieth century in America.

This is a simple little book with fascinating tidbits on our favorite First Lady. A nice addition to anyone's library. FOR QUETIONS OR DISCUSSIONS ON JACKIE ONASSIS, PLEASE E-MAIL ME AT MellissaLD@aol.com. HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU!!!!!!!!!!

I bought this at Arlington Cemetary on trip to Washington,D.C. and read and finished the book before the trip was over.It told a great story and was well researched.