Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy by Caroline Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a fascinating work and an example of an audiobook experience that cannot be equaled by the printed word, in my opinion. After an introduction by Caroline Kennedy describing the history of the tapes and how and why she decided to publish them. The basically unedited conversations (more than a half dozen of them) between Jacqueline Kennedy (not yet Onassis) and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. come across as very intimate, as if you were in the room with them. There are the sounds of ice clinking in glasses, Jackie smoking, the kids at play and planes overhead let alone every pause for consideration, intonation and hesitation that only comes across in conversation.
Schlesinger, having served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963, is hardly a disinterested party, so the converstaion is often one more of mutual recollection than a historian interviewing a subject. It is interesting to watch (listen) to Schlesinger work. He doesn't immediately leap to help recall a fact or complete a sentence, letting Jackie stumble through the halls of her own memory at times, which is itself a service to history. Also, he seems to gently redirect the conversation at times when Jackie seems very willing to put forward very negative opinions about persons (Mrs. Eisenhower, Mrs. Luce, MLK, etc.) or peoples (the French).
There is more insight here about Jackie raising children on the campaign trail, getting the White House guide done and availabe for sale and confronting the possibility of nuclear war as a wife and mother than there is in political insight. Either Jackie succeeded in staying out of the loop of policy deliberations or she just chose to not be forthcoming about such things. She is more divulging about state dinners, such as the personal mannerisms of Kruschev, Nehru and the leaders of Pakistan, Indonesia, and Sudan.
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