Publisher, Random House Audiobooks (December 2010)

Listen to a FREE audio clip.

“William Kuhn reveals the Jackie I knew as a person and professional: serious, smart, intuitive about ideas and aesthetics, but also down to earth in the sense of understanding the potential audience for a book. In Reading Jackie I learned so much about her I didn't know, and Kuhn tells the story with such flowing grace of phrase and structure. A splendid work.” —Bill Moyers

“A revealing, readable, and insightful book. Readers of biographies of iconic figures will eat this up. . . . Kuhn’s respectful approach would probably have met with Onassis’s approval.” —Library Journal

"A clever, surprisingly substantial take on the life of Jacqueline Onassis. . . . Both respectful and scintillating." —Kirkus Reviews

“Kuhn describes in fascinating detail the final third of Jackie's life and argues persuasively that the books she edited or helped bring to publication shed light on her inner life, forming an autobiography of sorts. . . . Kuhn's originality of research is striking. Many of his interviews were conducted with Jackie's colleagues, authors and friends, and they often provided him with fresh and intriguing details about her life. . . . A treat for bibliophiles and Jackiephiles — and especially for those for whom those interests overlap — Kuhn's insightful book sheds welcome light on a vital, and previously neglected, aspect of her life.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's authors, colleagues, and friends, Reading Jackie mines this significant period of her life to reveal both the serious and the mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image.

Though Jackie had a reputation for avoiding publicity, she willingly courted controversy in her books. She was the first editor to commission a commercially-successful book telling the story of Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his female slave. Her publication of Gelsey Kirkland's attack on dance icon George Balanchine caused another storm. Jackie rarely spoke of her personal life, but many of her books ran parallel to, echoed, and emerged from her own experience. She was the editor behind bestsellers on the assassinations of Tsar Nicholas II and John Lennon, and in another book she paid tribute to the allure of Marilyn Monroe and Maria Callas. Her other projects take us into territory she knew well: journeys to Egypt and India, explorations of the mysteries of female beauty and media exploitation, into the minds of photographers, art historians, and the designers at Tiffany & Co.

Many Americans regarded Jackie as the paragon of grace, but few knew her as the woman sitting on her office floor laying out illustrations, or flying to California to persuade Michael Jackson to write his autobiography. Reading Jackie provides a compelling behind-the-scenes look at Jackie at work: how she commissioned books and nurtured authors, as well as how she helped to shape stories that spoke to her strongly. Jackie is remembered today for her marriages to JFK and to Aristotle Onassis, but her real legacy is the books that reveal the tastes, recollections, and passions of an independent woman.

About the Author: WILLIAM KUHN is a biographer and historian. He is the author of three previous books, including, most recently, a controversial biography, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli. His Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria was a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week read by actor Geoffrey Palmer.

About the Narrator: Susan Denaker’s extensive theatre credits include numerous plays in the West End of London, national tours, many English Rep companies, including a season with Alan Ayckbourn’s company in Scarborough. More recently in the U.S., Susan has appeared in Our Town and Sweet Bird of Youth both at the La Jolla Playhouse and Breaking Legs at the Westport Playhouse.