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Drawing on letters, personal papers, and interviews with Kennedy intimates speaking for the first time, this sensitive portrait of the twentieth century's most storied presidency reveals how the Kennedys and their circle changed the political and social landscape of America - and how it, in turn, altered them. In the process, Smith reveals JFK for what he was: a politically progressive man who created a New Frontier and stood up to the Soviets; a family man who, though a devoted father, was entangled with scores of mistresses and women half his age; and an extraordinary leader with a streak of uncontrollable recklessness. If you like this title, you might also like…
From the book ...preface
They certainly have acquired something we have lost--a casual sort of grandeur about their evenings, always at the end of the day's business, the promise of parties, and pretty women, and music and beautiful clothes, and champagne, and all that. I must say there is something very 18th century about your new young man, an aristocratic touch. --british prime minister harold macmillan on john and jacqueline kennedy and their white house circle On November 29, 1963--a week after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas--his widow, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, summoned presidential chronicler Theodore H. White to the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. She wanted White to write an essay about her husband for Life, the magazine that had celebrated the Kennedys in words and photographs for more than a decade. Jackie Kennedy spoke for four hours, until just past midnight, with "composure," a "calm voice," and "total recall." It was a rambling monologue about the assassination, her late husband's love of history dating from his sickly childhood, and her views on how he should be remembered. She didn't want him immortalized by "bitter" men such as New York Times columnist Arthur Krock and Merriman Smith, the AP White House correspondent. Well versed in the classics, she said she felt "ashamed" that she was unable to come up with a lofty historical metaphor for the Kennedy presidency. Instead, she told White, her "obsession" was a song from the popular Broadway show Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner (a JFK friend from boarding school and college) and Frederick Loewe, which opened only weeks after Kennedy was elected. The sentimental musical popularized the legend of the British medieval King Arthur, his wife Queen Guinevere, and the heroic knights of the Round Table. Jackie recounted to White that at night before going to sleep, Jack Kennedy listened to Camelot on his "old Victrola." "I'd get out of bed at night and play it for him when it was so cold getting out of bed," she said. His favorite lines were at the end of the record: "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." White spent only forty-five minutes writing "For President Kennedy: An Epilogue," a thousand-word reminiscence for Life's December 6 issue. With close editing by Jackie Kennedy (among her numerous alterations, she changed "this was the idea that she wanted to share" to "this was the idea that transfixed her"), the piece set forth the Camelot metaphor that has defined the Kennedy presidency for four decades. At an exhibit of Jackie Kennedy's designer clothing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington in 2001 and 2002, the Lerner and Loewe tune played over and over, a soothing loop of background music. As a child, Jack Kennedy would "devour [stories of] the knights of the Round Table," according to Jackie. After the Wisconsin primary during the 1960 election campaign, he read The King Must Die, by Mary Renault, about the martyrdom of such folk heroes as Arthur in Britain and Roland in France. Given Kennedy's middlebrow fondness for show tunes, it was only natural that in May 1962 Jackie invited Frederick Loewe to a small dinner at the White House. At the President's request, the composer played the score of Camelot on the piano. Still, many of Kennedy's friends, especially the intellectuals, have tried to dismiss or downplay the Camelot image as inapt and mawkish, suggesting that it would have made the cool and brainy JFK wince. Harvard...
 ...Smith, a Vanity Fair editor, former NEW YORK TIMES journalist, and biographer offers an elegant text describing the principals of the Kennedy White House. Central to the story, of course, are Jack and Jackie, but Smith also describes with engaging detail the whole cast of characters--from family members to old friends to administration members and other figures who entered the Kennedy orbit. Lee Adams sounds like she could be the author. Matching the text, Adams provides a subtle and sophisticated reading. Another reader might have been able to provide dramatic vocal characterizations; nevertheless, this is still an entertaining audiobook. M.L.C. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
STROBE TALBOTT, author of The Russia Hand...
"After all the hundreds of books written about JFK and Jackie, this is the one that really tells the truth, that gets behind the layers of gossip and conspiracy and innuendo to tell the reader what life was actually like in the White House of Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Sally Bedell Smith is a phenomenal reporter with a sure command of her subject and a keen eye for telling detail and personal nuance. This is it: the last -- and true -- word on the Kennedy White House."
-EVAN THOMAS, author of Robert Kennedy: His Life "GRACE AND POWER has the readability and texture of an absorbing novel of manners, but it is also a social history of an event-making president and first lady and their entourage at the center of a fateful time. Sally Bedell Smith has done an impressive job of revealing geological layers of the Kennedy world that, despite hundreds of previous books, have remained unseen until now." -- MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, author of The Conquerors "Sally Bedell Smith has produced a mesmerizing account of the Kennedy years that is filled with rich reporting, sophisticated insights, and riveting tales all put into historical perspective. Both Jack and Jackie come into vivid focus. We see the complex relations they had with their court of friends and advisers, and we feel the poignancy of such moments as the death of their son Patrick. It's a fascinating book written with grace and intelligence." -WALTER ISAACSON, author of Benjamin Franklin: an American Life "The Kennedys and their crowd always seemed just out of earshot. In GRACE AND POWER, we at last hear what they were saying." -JOSEPH J. ELLIS, author of Founding Brothers "Sally Bedell Smith has not just come up with new information and fresh insights -- she has made the story itself seem new and fresh and more compelling than ever. For those of us who remember the Kennedys, this book helps us better understand an episode that shaped our lives. For younger readers, GRACE AND POWER brilliantly captures a moment in history that shaped their world."
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