Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

History remembers Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as the consummate first lady, the nation's tragic widow, the tycoon's wife, and, of course, the quintessential embodiment of elegance. Her biographers, however, tend to skip over an equally important stage in her life: her almost two-decade-long career as a book editor, publishing authors as diverse as Diana Vreeland, Louis Auchincloss, George Plimpton, Dorothy West, Naguib Mahfouz, and even Michael Jackson.

Greg Lawrence, who had three of his boo...