Jacqueline Kennedy

Jacqueline Kennedy: It’s a side of Jacqueline Kennedy only friends & family knew. Funny and inquisitive, canny and cutting In “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy,’’ the former 1st lady wasn't yet the jet-setting fame of the late 1960s or the well-written editor of the 1970s and 1980s. But she was also nothing like the soft-spoken style icon of the 3 previous years. She was in her mid-30s, lately widowed, but dry-eyed and determined to set down her thoughts for history. Kennedy met with historian and former White House aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in her 18th-century Washington house in the spring & early summer of 1964. At home and at ease, as if receiving a guest for afternoon tea, she chatted about her husband and their time in the White House. The young Kennedy babies, Caroline and John Jr., occasionally popped in. On the accompanying audio discs, you can hear the shake of ice inside a drinking glass. The tapes were to be sealed for decades and were among the final documents of her private thoughts. She ne'er wrote a memoir and became a legend in part because of what we did not know