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Summary
Summary
A New York Times Bestselling Author -- For more than half a century, Americans have been captivated by the Kennedys -- their joy and heartbreak, tragedy and triumph, the dark side and the remarkable achievements. In this ambitious and sweeping account, Taraborrelli continues the family chronicle begun with his bestselling Jackie, Ethel, Joan and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the ongoing saga of the nation's most famous family.
Author Notes
Bestselling author and news reporter J. Randy Taraborrelli was born on February 29, 1956. His biographies have focused on celebrities such as Cher, Carol Burnett, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. His biography called The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty, made it to the New York Times bestseller list in 2014. His latest book is Jackie, Janet & Lee: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill, published in January 2018.
Taraborrelli has been a guest on television programs including Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Larry King Live, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, and CNN. He also contributes entertainment articles internationally to Hello!, The Daily Mail and Sunday Mail, and Australia's Women's Weekly.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Taraborrelli picks up where he left off in Jackie, Ethel, Joan, adding more revelatory portraits of the Kennedys during the past four decades. To document America's "royal family," he conducted interviews with family members and their intimates, such people as Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Oleg Cassini, Robert McNamara, Pierre Salinger, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and numerous confidential sources. He also relied heavily on the 40 years of personal correspondence between Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson. There's a parade of triumphs and tragedies, along with an insider's view of family dynamics in crises both public and private: financial negotiations before Jackie's marriage to Onassis; family interference in Pat Kennedy and Peter Lawford's troubled marriage; Ted Kennedy's bad behavior at Chappaquiddick, and his support of Caroline's abortive Senate run to carry on the "family dynasty." Taraborrelli has a fine flair for turning dry facts into dramatic descriptions so that many oft-told stories take on a new perspective. Meticulous multilayered details breathe life into remarkable recreations of family gatherings throughout this superb "fly on the wall" survey of the Camelot clan. Photos. Agent: TK. (Apr. 24) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Taraborrelli (The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, 2009, etc.) continues the Kennedy family saga begun in Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (2000). We have met them before: the martyred president's widow Jackie, the cigar-smoking Eunice, the beloved paterfamilias Joseph, the mother Rose, the changed-man Bobby, Ted of Chappaquiddick, the raucous Ethel, etc. In this gossipy, admiring story of the Kennedys of Massachusetts in the four decades after Bobby's 1968 assassination, Taraborrelli celebrates the enduring appeal of America's royal family and rehashes the feuds, scandals and heartbreaks that have made them so human. Again and again, he shows the family closing ranks: "The Kennedys would do what they always did in such situations," he writes of Ted's crisis with the girl in the car on the bridge. "They would come together." This larger-than-life clan, striving to serve while grappling with the Kennedy "curse," certainly lends itself to soap opera (Jackie, Ethel, Joan became a TV mini-series), and Taraborrelli gathers every luscious detail of the scandals, arrests, affairs, overdoses and bad-boy antics that have marked the post-Camelot years. It's all here: Jackie's marriage negotiations with Aristotle Onassis, Ted picking up young women in bars with his sons, the dangerous ski game at Aspen that took Michael Kennedy's life, the interventions to halt young David Kennedy's drug abuse, William Kennedy Smith's trial on rape charges in Palm Beach and the deaths in recent years of Rosemary, Ted and Sargent Shriver. The author reveals the family's most intimate details, and some readers will wish the author had taken his cue from the Cape Cod photographer who stopped shooting pictures of 103-year-old Rose Kennedy: "She was so wasted awayit felt like an invasion of privacy to even photograph her." A big, juicy read for Kennedy fans.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Taraborrelli does his best to be as inclusive as possible with the masses of Kennedys, but listeners may have trouble keeping the generations and the individuals straight. The tragedies, scandals, drug/alcohol issues, and bad behavior mixed with religion, politics, and large amounts of money swirl around like a kaleidoscope. Performer Robert Petkoff does a fine job of navigating among personalities, giving life to the players through an array of accents. With separate voices and pacing, he is able to keep the production moving along. VERDICT Recommended for public libraries with patrons who never get enough of the Kennedys or mid-20th-century politics. ["Taraborrelli shows what makes the Kennedy legacy so enduring. His book...will appeal both to those long fascinated with the Kennedys and those new to following them, as well as readers more generally interested in American political and social history over these years," read the review of the Grand Central hc, LJ 4/15/12.-Ed.]-Barbara Valle, El Paso P.L., TX (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
