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Jackie: As Editor | LitPick Book Reviews
Jackie: As Editor
Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jackie: As Editor
Greg Lawrence
An absorbing chronicle of a much overlooked chapter in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s life—her nineteen-year editorial career History remembers Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as the consummate first lady, the nation’s tragic widow, the millionaire’s wife, and, of course, the quintessential embodiment of elegance. Her biographers, however, skip over an equally important stage in her life: her nearly twenty year long career as a book editor. Jackie as Editor is the first book to focus exclusively on this remarkable woman’s editorial career. At the age of forty-six, one of the most famous women in the world went to work for the first time in twenty-two years. Greg Lawrence, who had three of his books edited by Jackie, draws from interviews with more than 125 of her former collaborators and acquaintances in the publishing world to examine one of the twentieth century's most enduring subjects of fascination through a new angle: her previously untouted skill in the career she chose. Over the last third of her life, Jackie would master a new industry, weather a very public professional scandal, and shepherd more than a hundred books through the increasingly corporate halls of Viking and Doubleday, publishing authors as diverse as Diana Vreeland, Louis Auchincloss, George Plimpton, Bill Moyers, Dorothy West, Naguib Mahfouz, and even Michael Jackson. Jackie as Editor gives intimate new insights into the life of a complex and enigmatic woman who found fulfillment through her creative career during book publishing’s legendary Golden Age, and, away from the public eye, quietly defined life on her own terms.

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Biography

Age Level: 

  • 12 and up
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This book is a non-fiction documentary of the life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis after losing her second husband. Jackie was accused of being hard-hearted, as she wasn't with her second husband when he died, but this book informs you that she experienced hardships trying to get over her grief. When a friend suggested that she try to be an editor, Jackie was a bit doubtful. After all, her late husband Ari Onassis had stated imperiously to her, "A Greek wife does not work." But she decided to give it a try.

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