New Books In Biography

Nearly twenty years after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, biographers are not only continuing to tell her story but finding provocative new ways to do so. In particular, a big bravo to William Kuhn for considering the former First Lady in a context that (a) has nothing to with her husbands, and (b) brings fresh perspective. Jackie’s post-“Camelot” years–namely, her marriage to Onassis and her publishing career–are often given short shrift, but Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books (Anchor Books, 2011) steps in to fill the later gap and it’s downright revelatory. What we read reveals much about who we are. That’s the idea behind Reading Jackie and it seems simple enough. But, in viewing Jackie Onassis’s life through the lens of the books she edited, Kuhn produces something quite sophisticated- a nuanced portrait of a thwarted artist for whom reading was a vital means of participating in the art world. As Kuhn writes: “That sense early on of what she could not do was at the nub of Jackie’s self-