JFK: Public, Private, Secret

President John F. Kennedy was a heartless womanizer who managed to evolve into a loving husband just before his death, according to this breathless biography. Camelot chronicler Taraborrelli (Jackie) focuses on Kennedy’s personal relationships, starting with his upbringing by his domineering father Joe, whose infidelities set a bad example, and his cold, unmaternal mother Rose, whose bitter acquiescence to Joe’s affairs demonstrated that such behavior was tolerable. From there, the episodic narrative moves on to Kennedy’s romantic attachments, including a wartime affair with his great love Inga Arpad, a Danish woman rumored to be a German spy—the FBI listened in on their trysts—whom Joe ordered Kennedy to break up with. The book’s centerpiece is Kennedy’s tense marriage to Jackie Bouvier, which owed more to money and political calculation than love. Taraborrelli foregrounds Jackie’s anguish over Kennedy’s compulsive dalliances with many mistresses, including Joan Lundberg (Taraborrelli reveals that Kennedy got her pregnant and paid for an abortion). And yet, Taraborrelli contends, love did finally flourish after their baby Patrick died in August 1963, when a guilt-stricken Kennedy fully committed himself to Jackie. While Taraborrelli eschews sensationalism, casting doubt on several lurid Kennedy legends, including the alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe, his emotionally charged portrait still plays the melodrama to the hilt. It’s a sentimental and entertaining take on a great American soap opera. (July)