Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy

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.