JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography

by RoseMarie Terenzio, Liz McNeil

Overview

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The first oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. is an extraordinarily intimate, comprehensive look at the real man behind the myth. Sharing never-before-told stories and insights, his closest friends, confidantes, lovers, classmates, teachers, and colleagues paint a vivid portrait of one of the most beloved figures of the 20th century, revealing how the boy who saluted became the man America came to know and love who still captures public imagination twenty-five years after his tragic death.

Born into the spotlight, John F. Kennedy Jr. lived a short but remarkable life filled with expectation, ambition, family pressures, love, and tragedy. JFK Jr. dives deep into his complicated psyche and explores the what-ifs, illuminating both the cultural and political moment he inhabited and the way this son of a president, so full of promise and possibility, embodied America’s most cherished hopes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668018538
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	07/16/2024
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	8,137
File size:	57 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

RoseMarie Terenzio is the New York Times bestselling author of Fairy Tale Interrupted and the former executive assistant to John F. Kennedy Jr. She served as JFK Jr.’s chief of staff at George magazine and oversaw his public relations and philanthropic causes until his death in 1999. Terenzio is the executive producer of Paramount Network’s I Am JFK, Jr. She is from New York City, where she lives and works as a strategic communications professional.

Liz McNeil is an editor-at-large at People, where she has worked for the last thirty years. She was the executive producer of the Discovery+ documentary Rebuilding Hope: The Children of 9/11 and the writer and executive producer of People’s podcast Cover-Up. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Editorial Reviews

This oral history of John Kennedy Jr. provides poignant insights and tales from scores of friends and colleagues who knew him well. It’s about more than politics and celebrity. It also deals with issues of adversity, friendship, loyalty, pain, and joy.” –Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author

“Fascinating...the fullest portrait of Kennedy ever written.” –Washington Post

From the Publisher

08/02/2024

This engaging, sincere, and heartbreaking oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. (1960–99) was published on the 25th anniversary of the deaths of JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren when the plane he was piloting crashed. His former executive assistant Terenzio (Fairy Tale Interrupted) and McNeil (editor-at-large, People) have assembled an affectionate biography told by many people closest to him: his family, friends, coworkers, media personalities, and lots of former girlfriends. Their stories paint a picture of who he really was. In the public eye since his birth, he carried his father's name but had few memories of him since he was three days shy of his third birthday when his father was assassinated. He graduated from law school and worked at the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1989 to 1993. In 1995, he and Michael Berman founded the political magazine George. He married Bessette in a top-secret ceremony in 1996, and the book shows their union was rocky. VERDICT While several bios about Kennedy are on the market, this collection of eyewitness tales feels fresh and heartfelt.—Kevin Howell

Library Journal

2024-07-16
John Kennedy Jr. was always in the spotlight, but separating the man from the myth is a hard task.

Oral biographies are strange literary creatures, prone to selective memory on the part of the interviewees and careful editing from the compilers. When the subject died young and tragically, these problems are compounded. So one might approach this account with a certain wariness, especially as Terenzio had a lengthy professional relationship with Kennedy and has already written a book about him,Fairy Tale Interrupted. It is not clear that there is anything meaningful to add, although Terenzio andPeople magazine editor at large McNeil have rounded up scores of people who knew Kennedy in some way, from his childhood growing up in the White House as the president’s toddler son to his death in an airplane crash in 1999 at the age of 39. Much of his life was defined by the famous photograph of him saluting the flag-draped coffin of his father. He could never escape his name and legacy, although he often seemed unsure about whether he wanted to live a private life or go into the family business of politics. Several contributors say that Kennedy showed “promise,” but this is only speculation. The overall tone is one of nostalgia, and the picture of Kennedy that emerges is more like a cardboard cutout than a real person. It is difficult to understand the purpose of this rehash of familiar material.

Will appeal to those with a special interest in the Kennedy clan, but other readers might give it a miss.

Kirkus Reviews