Camera Girl

March 13, 2023
Even before Jackie Bouvier married John F. Kennedy, she was a force to be reckoned with, according to this deeply researched biography. Spotlighting the formative period from 1949, when Jackie spent her junior year of college studying in France, to 1953, when she married JFK, historian Anthony (Why They Wore It) reveals a young woman of fierce intelligence, ambition, and persistence. After returning from France, she transferred from Vassar College to George Washington University, where she won a contest to become a junior editor in Vogue magazine’s Paris office (she eventually turned the prize down). Early in her courtship with JFK (they were first introduced by mutual friends at a dinner party in 1951 but only started seriously dating after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952), he asked her to translate passages from a dozen “obscure, plodding” French books and compile the material into a report on the history of France’s involvement in Indochina. “That Jack Kennedy asked her to do this, and the chance it offered her to demonstrate the power of her mind, was irresistible,” Anthony writes. He also sheds intriguing light on Jackie’s stint as a columnist for the Washington Times-Herald, the engagement she called off prior to marrying JFK, and her volatile and occasionally violent relationship with her mother. The result is a convincing and colorful reconsideration of a first lady known more for her style than her substance.

Starred review from April 1, 2023

Presidential families historian Anthony returns to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, the subject of one of his previous books, As We Remember Her. This time, he focuses on the years 1949 to 1953, beginning with her arrival in Paris with a new Leica camera for a junior year at Smith College's study-abroad program. The book notes she longed for independence from her "privileged, but also traumatic" past after the bitter divorce of her parents, which left her determined to resist getting married herself. After winning--and declining--Vogue's prestigious Prix de Paris award (a year-long junior editorship with the magazine) because her mother didn't want her to leave the country at that time, Jackie became the Washington Times-Herald's "Inquiring Camera Girl" until forced to give up the job after becoming engaged to John F. Kennedy. Anthony mines her articles with aplomb, using the questions she posed to people on the streets of Washington, DC, as a window into her psyche. The book ends with her much-publicized marriage to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. VERDICT Whether she's avoiding a traffic ticket after speeding in her car named Zelda, or translating books for Kennedy's report on the history of France in Indochina, this portrait of young Jackie Bouvier shines with wit and intelligence.--Denise Miller

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2023
While there seems to be no stone unturned when it comes to her life after marrying John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier's early years are generally less deeply probed. A prolific biographer of first ladies and first families, Anthony uses the hook of Jackie's early obsession with photography to cover the years from 1949 to 1953, charting Jackie's metamorphosis from frivolous debutante to inquisitive international student, enterprising photojournalist, and circumspect political helpmate. Of note is the contentious relationship between Jackie's divorced parents and the way their individual custodial battles influenced her behavior. Portraying her father, John "Black Jack" Bouvier, as inappropriately dependent and overly attentive, and her mother, Janet Auchincloss, as psychologically abusive and fiercely domineering, Anthony uncovers the root of Jackie's distinctive blend of rebelliousness and vulnerability, independence and insecurity that would attract and confound supporters and critics alike. By drawing on extensive interviews with Jackie's contemporaries and family, oral histories, and presidential archives, Anthony delivers a well-rounded depiction of this eternally fascinating, covertly complicated, and perennially misunderstood historical and cultural icon.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
A uniquely focused portrait of the former first lady before Camelot. Prior to her marriage to John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-1994) was an ambitious journalist and photographer, a remarkable period of her life captured in this engaging coming-of-age biography. Anthony, a former speechwriter for Nancy Reagan who has written several historical books about first ladies, digs deep into what her life was like before she became a public figure herself. He mines Bouvier's "Inquiring Camera Girl" column, which she produced for the Washington Times-Herald from 1951 to 1953, for connections to her private life and examples of what her journalistic process was like. "Instead of asking ladies at luncheons, for example, 'What do you think of Dior's spring fashion line?' she waited on a street corner for truck drivers to stop at a red light and shouted out the question," writes Anthony. "Other times she poked at what might lie beneath the surface of those with strongly defined personas, asking circus clowns, 'Does your smiling face hide a broken heart?' and 'Are you funny at home?' " Drawing on Bouvier's letters and interviews, Anthony pulls together a compelling portrait of a young woman facing both the problems of her time and timeless issues. Should she focus on her career or getting married? How can she be respectful to her problematic parents while still declaring her own adult independence? When she met then-Congressman John F. Kennedy and his family, her conflicts became more emotional, especially as she broke off an engagement and dealt with Kennedy's presidential ambitions and unorthodox courting style as well as his much-documented extramarital relationships. The fact that the book ends when Bouvier is 24 and marries Kennedy shows how impressive her early accomplishments really were. A well-crafted biography that could easily spawn both a delightful TV drama or a historical look at female journalists.

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