Just Jackie: Her Private Years

According to Klein, the author of All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis began courting the widow less than 48 hours after her husband's assassination, but she made him wait, which drove him crazy. Soon she got drunk with Marlon Brando and later with Clint Hill (the agent had thrown his body on top of hers during Oswald's fusillade) at D.C.'s fanciest restaurant. Brando she took home to seduce by dancing to Wayne Newton's "Danke Schoen," pressing her thighs against him, but he fled into the night. Cowboy-handsome Clint Hill and Jackie were seen necking and petting, occasionally disappearing beneath their banquette. Klein (the spoilsport) says Jackie didn't sleep with Ros Gilpatrick, Lord Harlech, Frank Sinatra, or Bobby Kennedy, even though Ethel was told, "He's spending an awful lot of time with the widder."

The book is arranged in bite-sized mini-chapters, and there's a naughty treat in almost every bite. Though Ari didn't kiss Jackie at their wedding, an alleged accidental eyewitness calls their lovemaking "energetic and creative"--maybe because, unlike with his previous girlfriends, Ari didn't burn Jackie with cigars or wear her clothes. Jackie may have spent over $2 million (in 1998 dollars) on clothes, but hey, her pal Bunny Mellon spent $6 million.

Klein offers lots of intimate alleged facts, like her three face-lifts in the '80s, but the best thing about the book are the quotes, some of them Jackie's. Her friend Brendan Gill poses the central question of her life: "How does one live publicly in a world where one has to lie?" Some of the truths are probably in this book. --Tim Appelo