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.


From Library Journal
Spoto joins the ranks of other Kennedy chroniclers with this expansive and well-documented biography of the former First Lady. A celebrity biographer who has written several best-selling biographies (on Marlene Dietrich and Alfred Hitchcock, among others), Spoto draws from interviews with friends, family, and colleagues, published materials, and psychological insight to paint a picture of Jackie as an incredibly intelligent and complex person. Especially interesting is the first half of the book, in which he describes Jackie's early life, her insatiable reading habits, and her mostly unknown but indispensable efforts to aid her husband both before and during his Presidency. Although at times overly reverent, this well-written work is a nice contrast to the gossipy and unflattering recent biography by Christopher Andersen, Jackie After Jack: Portrait of a Lady (Warner, 1999). Recommended for public libraries.---Maria C. Bagshaw, Lake Erie Coll., Painesville, OH Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Celebrity biographer Spoto (Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman, 1997, etc.) glides smoothly across the silken surface of the life of one of this century's most famous women. Seldom is heard a discouraging word in this tribute. In its three sections (Miss Bouvier, Mrs. Kennedy, and Mrs. Onassis) Spoto has set himself a difficult task: to force into the foreground of the Kennedy legend a woman who spent most of her adult lifethe post-assassination portionseeking the shadows. Accordingly, he emphasizes her ``remarkable ability as a quick sketch artist''; her skills as a ``hilarious mimic''; her grace on horseback; her failed first engagement in 1952; her broken ankle (suffered in a game of touch football with the Kennedys); her leading role in the publication of JFK's Profiles in Courage (1956); her devotion to culture and the arts (Spoto convincingly portrays her as a true intellectual rather than a dilettante); the ``almost manic discontent'' she experienced during the years immediately after the assassination; her lucrative, laissez-faire marriage to Aristotle Onassis; and her career as an editor, first at Viking (she resigned after a misunderstanding involving the publication of a novel featuring Sen. Edward Kennedy), then at Doubleday, where in the 1980s, says Spoto, she ``produced some of the most interesting books of the decade.'' Spoto struggles to explain Jackie's apparent acceptance of JFK's many extramarital affairs (perhaps she ``simply decided that a certain profligacy was part of a man's character''), and he seems determined to establish her as an American queen, asserting that she and JFK ``adopted precisely the style of the modern British monarchy. Some of his observations, however, are ludicrousfor instance, that her composure derives from her ``alliance with horses,'' or that she was the ``first non-Hollywood star in American history'' (Charles Lindbergh? Babe Ruth?). Uncritical, unoriginal, sometimes downright sappyjust like most love letters. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"A complete portrait of one of America's most famous women...Page after page reveals hidden details of her life." --Associated Press

"The material is both riveting and heartbreaking...Spoto has written a most readable, clear-eyed account of the life of one of the most scrutinized women in American history." --Portland Oregonian



Book Description
She was America's sweetheart; the embodiment of grace, elegance, style, charm, and-as the world discovered in late 1963-bravery. And though much has been written about the most famous woman of the 20th century, no biography has revealed the true Jackie; none has successfully separated the truth from the lies, or portrayed the Queen of Camelot in all her complexity-until now. With access to Jackie's own writings, the archives of the John F. Kennedy Library, and those who knew her best, bestselling celebrity biographer Donald Spoto illuminates Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the sixty-five years of her life with candor, compassion and compelling detail. Readers will discover:

* The early years: a privileged but lonely childhood that shaped Jackie's resilience and poise, working as a photojournalist for the Washington Times-Herald, and meeting a handsome congressman named Kennedy
* Life as the first lady: dealing with Jack's infidelity, adjusting to life in the spotlight, and her influence on the policies of the Kennedy Administration
* Mrs. Onassis: life after Jack, marrying the Greek tycoon, her accomplished career as a book editor, her final days, and much more

FROM THE PUBLISHER

She was America's sweetheart; the embodiment of grace, elegance, style, charm, and-as the world discovered in late 1963-bravery. And though much has been written about the most famous woman of the 20th century, no biography has revealed the true Jackie; none has successfully separated the truth from the lies, or portrayed the Queen of Camelot in all her complexity-until now. With access to Jackie's own writings, the archives of the John F. Kennedy Library, and those who knew her best, bestselling celebrity biographer Donald Spoto illuminates Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the sixty-five years of her life with candor, compassion and compelling detail. Readers will discover:

* The early years: a privileged but lonely childhood that shaped Jackie's resilience and poise, working as a photojournalist for the Washington Times-Herald, and meeting a handsome congressman named Kennedy * Life as the first lady: dealing with Jack's infidelity, adjusting to life in the spotlight, and her influence on the policies of the Kennedy Administration * Mrs. Onassis: life after Jack, marrying the Greek tycoon, her accomplished career as a book editor, her final days, and much more

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Spoto has taken on Marilyn, Marlene, and Diana (among others), so why not Jackie Kennedy? Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Thomas - Helen Thomas, Civil White House Correspondent, United Press International