Jackie: Public, Private, Secret

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250801289
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/23/2024
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

J. RANDY TARABORRELLI is the acclaimed author of numerous New York Times bestsellers about the Kennedys, including Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot, adapted as a miniseries by NBC, and The Kennedys – After Camelot, adapted for television by Reelz. His other bestselling works include The Kennedy Heirs and Jackie, Janet & Lee. His most recent book, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list. Taraborrelli is currently adapting both Jackie: Public, Private, Secret and JFK: Public, Private, Secret for television.

Editorial Reviews

Taraborrelli’s nearly 25 years of research and interviewing sheds new light on every phase of Jacqueline Bouvier’s life . . . An absorbing and comprehensive account of one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Readable and deeply researched, [Jackie] is 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.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2023-04-04
The veteran Kennedy family biographer brings fresh details and insights into the public and private life of a first lady like no other.

Taraborrelli's nearly 25 years of research and interviewing sheds new light on every phase of Jacqueline Bouvier’s life, including her marriages to John F. Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis; the sacrifices and choices she made when establishing her publishing career; fits, starts, and ends with various lovers in the wakes of those marriages; and her relationships with her rakish, adoring father, John "Black Jack" Bouvier, domineering but loving mother, Janet Bouvier Auchincloss, and doting, reliable stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss. Taraborrelli spares readers from slogging through a conventional chronology, instead offering detailed vignettes in tandem with the necessary facts from his subject’s life that inform and enlighten. He details Jackie's decidedly weird relationship with her sister, Lee, a sibling rivalry involving their attractions to love, money, and power. He elegantly portrays how the horrifying trauma of the assassination of JFK and Jackie's attempts to reconcile the bizarre cocktail of tawdriness and genuine affection of their marriage were always under the surface. The author also capably describes Jackie's efforts to restore and revitalize Lafayette Park, the White House, and Grand Central Station as metaphors for her own self-improvement, independence, and growth as a modern woman in the latter half of the 20th century. Taraborrelli's firsthand knowledge of Jackie's career in publishing, which underscored her lifelong literary sensibility, enlivens the tale, and his descriptions of Jackie's editorial work with the likes of Michael Jackson—and her attempt to sign Frank Sinatra to write an autobiography (which dredged up uncomfortable truths about the company kept by JFK)—make clear the overwhelming intersection of power, celebrity, and fame in which Jackie found herself. The author understatedly conveys the many heretofore-unknown details of Jackie's "secret" life without resorting to lurid or salacious sensationalism.

An absorbing and comprehensive account of one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century.

Kirkus Reviews