Somehow I ended up creating two reviews for this book. I'm going to try to merge them into one.

Before you read this book, you should know that there is a list right here on Goodreads of all the books that Jackie edited, so you don't need to go searching for them to add to your own TBR. You can just go down the list and select the ones that sound interesting. Of course almost all of them sound interesting to me so I've added most of them.

Once this book gets going it tells you a little bit about how each book was selected by Jackie. Sometimes an author would come to her with an idea for a book, other times a specific subject caught her interest and then she would need to decide who would be the best person to write the book and approach them with the idea. I found it all very interesting.

It sounds like Jackie was a wonderful friend and a wonderful person to work with.

Definitely a keeper. I didn't skim through it but I did read it really fast because I knew instantly that I loved it and would keep it for ever and refer back to it.

Favorite parts for me. Kind of some spoilers, but not really spoilers:

Jackie visiting Nureyev's house on St. Bart's in the Caribbean and warning her friends to stay away from it, saying that it was filled with awful plastic furniture.

The part about working on Martha Graham's book, Blood Memory and Judith Jamison's book, Dancing Spirit.

Jackie and her friend, Jane Hitchock's fascination with the Bourbon Court and Marie Antoinette and Versaille, Josephine Bonaparte, and Belgian Princesse de Rethy (picture an accent mark thingy over the e in Rethy).

Stories behind all the Tiffany books.

Back story of the Kennedy Library.

Jackie's Arizona road trip with Stewart Udall, the last living member of the Kennedy cabinet, until he himself died in 2010 at age 90. Bouncing around in a Chevy Suburban, eating Navajo tacos and ice cream at a little dive in Chinle, drinking wine out of plastic cups.

Since I grew up in Arizona and know the places they visited, I definitely want to read the book that resulted from that trip: To The Inland Empire: Coronado and Our Spanish Legacy.

"She stood up magnificently in the period after the president's death" Udall paused, as if to reflect. "Then she married Onassis." Hahahahahaha.

Learning about Carl Elliott, 8-term Democratic member of House of Reps who spoke on behalf of the poor. When he ran against George Wallace's wife for Governor of Alabama, George Wallace sent Ku Klux Klan members to his election rallies. Elliott lost and used his Government pension to pay for his campaign and ended up living in poverty, in a dilapidated house. Jackie found someone to help write his memoirs, Cost of Courage. She did not remove his disparaging remarks about JFK.

The whole section on "The Spy Story" was riveting. As dangerous as the whole project was, Jackie struck the author as "free, unafraid, and determined to follow the story wherever it led." She was "clearly delighted with the whole effort , and was enjoying robustly the adventure of it all."

A friend recalled "how courageous Jackie could be, even to the extent of foolhardiness." But really, wouldn't you expect that of her after what she lived through in that car in Dallas? What could possible scare you after that?

The stories behind the John Lennon and Michael Jackson books.

"She discovered how Jackie worked as an editor: 'She encouraged, she didn't criticize."

"She remained someone who appreciated the absurd and ridiculous."

"Every once in awhile" Jackie said "you have to do something for the soul."

Upon receiving a book about Paris from a friend. "I am drowning in it, in a sweet agony of wishing I were back there, wishing I could live another passage of my life there."

"She was the most funny, unguarded, candid person imaginable."

"She was working the phones herself, trying to sell the idea to the most powerful people in the media business."

"This wasn't something she was being paid for; her interest in the story was what drove her."

"Her office was also a big shock. Myers imagined something grand with parquet floors and museum-quality paintings. Instead it was tiny, dominated by what looked like an army-issue Formica-topped desk. The floor was linoleum."

"He looked up and there was Jacqueline Onassis in stocking feet running. She wasn't wearing any shoes and she was tearing down the hall as if she were still a schoolgirl. She was in her sixties then. It humanized her. She was one of us. She was on a deadline. It was something any of us would have done."

Ok, I'll stop there. This book really made me wish I could've worked with Jackie in the publishing business. She sounds like a great person to work with and, other than the horrific assassination of her husband and dealing with cancer at the end, what a wonderful, fun, adventurous, and fascinating life she had. ( )

Interesting way to look at Jackie - through the books that she chose to edit.
I did enjoy learning more about her passion for reading and how the planning of the JFK library helped her deal with her grief. I plan on looking into some of the books she edited, the descriptions piqued my interest. ( )

I was surprised that I liked this take on the subject (Jacqueline Onassis as editor) better than than the other book (“Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis," by Greg Lawrence). Kuhn sort of eviscerates Lawrence, and it was an "ah-hah" moment to realize that Gelsey Kirkland's Lawrence is the same man. The Lawrence book is more pretentious; this book is just a good gossip, although I will never believe that Onassis really loved "Wide Sargasso Sea," which is just a miserable excuse for a novel. Anyway: good read. ( )

As a bookish person myself, it was gratifying to read about the bookish aspect to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's personality in this biography. This does touch upon other facets (and people) of Jackie's life, it focuses on Jackie's life-time love of books, her involvement in establishing the White House library and the John F. Kennedy library and museum, but primarily on her career as an editor.

Although I knew Jackie was an editor, I did not know which books were her projects until reading this -- it was interesting to discover which ones (particularly the few I've read already) she worked on. She learned early on that if the public became aware of which books she worked on, the focus could, and did, shift to her rather than the books or authors themselves.

Overall, a satisfying glimpse of Jackie, but as expected, it's not an full bio of her. ( )

Very good read. Im an editor so I look for books (fairly rare) about editors. I recommend this book. Ordered one of the books she did in the 80s about india. A lovely book too. This book set me thinking. ( )