Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life [Hardcover]

Donald Spoto (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2000

The first full and sweeping biography of Jacqueline Onassis since her death. In Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life, Donald Spoto separates Jackie Onassis from the myriad legends and plain untruths that have beclouded her life since the early 1960s. Based on Spoto's unprecedented access to a wealth of dramatic material newly released by the John F. Kennedy Archives and Interviews with those who knew her best, this book contains surprising new revelations and details on Jackie's marriages to the President of the United States and to the richest man in the world, as well as her subtle yet powerful influence on the policies of the Kennedy administration (especially in light of newly-released information from the medical files of President Kennedy). The book also presents the first complete portrait of her astonishing final years -- from her vibrant life as a dedicated, hard-working editor and devoted mother -- to her inspiring journey toward deep inner peace and wisdom. By bringing his prodigious biographical and research skills, as well as his spiritual insight to Jackie Onassis, Donald Spoto endows her story with a gravity and insight that no other biographer has yet been able to achieve. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life at last offers the whole story -- the powerful, piognant, controversial and inspiring biography of the most fascinating woman in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Donald Spoto, best known for his Hitchcock bio The Dark Side of Genius, gets past Jackie's dazzling mythic exterior, revealing beneath her white gloves the ominous nicotine stains that led to her early death, gently removing those sunglasses to peek into her soul. Though he, too, must rely on the kindness of anonymous sources, Spoto is relatively skeptical about the dishiest dirt. And because he's an ex-monk and theology professor, he can deal with her religious, intellectual side. She was a superb editor for a third of her life, and Spoto gives her sharp wit its due.

Thus, for Jackie's alleged defloration in a Paris elevator, consult All Too Human, and for her alleged beddings of Brando, Sinatra, Beatty, and Bobby Kennedy, read Jackie After Jack. Spoto paints a more restrained Jackie. Sure, she frolicked in moonlit Mayan pools in 1968 with a married ex-JFK cabinet member, but Spoto says she never slept with Bobby, that JFK's Marilyn Monroe fling was a one-night stand, and that Jackie demanded that he take pity on the suicidal actress. Jack and Jackie were kindred: "Each endured a lonely and difficult childhood with emotionally distant mothers and philandering fathers ... each had cultivated a certain solitude." Jack was cold, amoral, uncultured; Jackie nudged him on civil rights, regaled Niebuhr and Nehru, brought art and mind to the White House: "Underneath a veil of lovely inconsequence, she concealed ... an all-seeing eye and a ruthless judgment." Spoto makes their last months--when, ironically, they found real love for one another--as poignant as the moment she found his skull in her hand.

From the self-doubting kid whose vile mother talked her out of accepting Vogue's Prix de Paris to the self-possessed editor of Dancing on My Grave and A Cartoon History of the Universe, Spoto's Jackie is a plausible character one wishes one could have known. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran film biographer Spoto (Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman, etc.) does a masterful job of capturing--and explaining--the complex personality of a figure who was arguably the most important icon of American womanhood of her day. Particularly attentive to the ways in which his subject both shaped and was shaped by American social history, Spoto finds that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whose stated ambition upon graduating from high school in 1947 was "not to be a housewife," virtually embodied the shifting and often contradictory notions of ideal womanhood that defined her generation. A fierce intellectual and a compulsive shopper, a craver of solitude who nevertheless shone in the spotlight, a snob with a strong social conscience, a would-be career woman who also sought out the security of marriage to wealthy, prominent husbands, Jackie is indeed a study in contradictions. But Spoto convincingly accounts for each facet of her personality as a consequence of her upbringing (as the child of unhappily wed, social-climbing parents), of a cultural climate that at once encouraged women to nurture their talents and expected them to view themselves primarily as wives and mothers, and of her inclinations and abilities. While this is an unreservedly sympathetic and admiring portrait, it is also a candid one, detailing the ups and downs of Jackie's marriages and of her other relationships. Spoto concludes that Jackie found personal and professional fulfillment in her later years: in her relationships with her children and with Maurice Tempelsman, and in her career as an editor--a vocation at which, he maintains, she truly excelled. 32 pages b&w photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312246501
• ISBN-13: 978-0312246501
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,308,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #90 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( O ) > Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Serious Account of a Significant Life, February 13, 2000

By 

Dr. (WESTLAKE, OH, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life (Hardcover)

At age 31 Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy became the First Lady and thus the most recognized woman in the world. Three years later, at age 34, she witnessed the bloody murder of her husband on that dreadful day in Dallas. For the next four days this young woman shared her private loss in a very public way, as she "showed the country how to grieve." If she did nothing else with her life Jackie Kennedy would still be remembered as a very remarkable person. But, thanks to Donald Spoto's serious, yet warm and sympathetic biography we have a fuller picture of Jacquelie Bouvier Kennedy-Onassis long before Dallas and for the remaining thirty years of her significant life.

This book is not for those interested in the dirt and dish that so mistakenly is perceived as fact when writing about the Kennedys. There is none of that here. Rather, Spoto approaches his subject with a desire to understand the person by searching for the purpose and meaning she gave to her experiences, as recounted by those who knew her best. He writes in a style that is gaceful and respectful, mirroring his life as a monk, as well as the way Mrs. Kennedy-Onassis tried to live her life.

With all her wealth, opportunity, and experiences, Spoto emphasizes that her greatest accopmlishement in this extraordinary life was simply that she was a devoted and loving mother to her two children. A complex task for us all, made more difficult by having to parent under the constant glare of public curiosity.

Perhaps the most telling passage of the book, one that speaks to the truer character of JBKO, is when she was asked why she never chose to respond to the tabliods, the critics, or myriad of others who fed off her celebrity status. In other words, to just give her side of the story! Her reply was that the dirt and gossip would continue, she could not control that, but she faithfully believed that "they can never steal my soul." Therefore, no explaination, clarification or defense was necessary.

Those who admire Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and seek to explore the depth of her life beyond the myths, you will find this book worth reading. For those looking for something else -- keep searching.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay for a rainy day read, February 3, 2000

By 

Anita Shannon (Long Lake, Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life (Hardcover)

There wasn't a whole lot of real news in this book, but it's always nice to read about Jackie Kennedy. This book is a little bit slow going, and dull, but once I got into it I had to keep reading. I only wish the writer had gone into more detail about her relationship with her children and the Kennedy family. It always seemed to me that Jackie tried to shield her children from the influence of the Kennedy men, and I was curious to see if that was true. However, not much detail was given there. All in all, it was no earth-shattering work.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A valentine, February 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life (Hardcover)

This exhaustively researched book is very kind and extremely flattering to JBKO. So much so that is strained credibility. While the writer's approach is refreshing when compared to the hatchet jobs that have appeared over the years (one ludricous book even accuses Jackie of being an accomplice to JFK's murder!), it lacks the objectivity that a good biographer would bring to his subject. Still, I enjoyed the time I spent reading about this gallant lady.