Jackie as Editor

An absorbing chronicle of a much overlooked chapter of 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 tycoon's wife, and, of course, the quintessential embodiment of elegance. Her biographers, however, skip over just as equally an important stage in her life: her almost two-decade-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 46, one of the most famous women in the world went to work for the first time in her life. Greg Lawrence, one of her authors himself, 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 over 100 books through the increasingly corporate halls of Viking and Doubleday. Away from the public eye, Jackie quietly defined life on her own terms. 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.