Klein, like other observers, believes that Jackie may have taken at least one lover in retaliation for JFK's behavior over the years: Gianni Agnelli, the Fiat heir. Off partying in the Mediterranean with a boatful of women, Jack decided there was no reason to return home what good would that do? Not until press coverage of his absence threatened to make him look churlish did he agree to fly back. Klein's account of the young senator's response when Jackie suffered a stillbirth in 1956 is not new, but it's as chilling a tale as ever.

More striking by far than any single revelation here is the overwhelming evidence that in private life, JFK was pond scum. Klein writes that the two slept together while Jackie was still in the hospital after Caroline's birth. As for Jack, his monomaniacal skirt-chasing has been well documented, and Klein puts a new name on the list - Lee Radziwill, Jackie's sister. Marquand Jr., son of the novelist Klein describes them having sex in an old-fashioned elevator on their way up to Marquand's flat. Anyone curious about Jackie's premarital sex life, for instance, will pounce on the news of a love affair she had in Paris during her junior year abroad. Instead, we get a largely familiar Kennedy story about money, alcohol, sex and politics, albeit with some fresh details. His book never taps the mysteries of its provocative cover. Surely there is, as Klein promises in his subtitle, a ''love story'' to be told about the Kennedys, one that shows how the word ''love'' might be capacious enough to describe their marriage in its entirety.Īlas, Klein hasn't written that story. But surely that grim chronicle isn't the only truth about the Kennedys, any more than incessant photos of Camelot and romps on the beach adequately sum up their relationship. After everything that's been written about this couple in the last three decades, it's impossible not to stare at that photo and see their future unfolding: the flagrant infidelities, the misery and pressure, the amphetamine use, the stillbirth and the newborn's death, the horrible finale. They both look very young, and in Jackie's clear eyes there is a great deal of faith. Jack's face is averted from the camera, but he seems to be gazing back at her, while a slight smile crinkles his face. The picture shows Jackie in pearls and makeup gazing straight into Jack's eyes, her little finger hooked around his lapel. THERE'S A WONDERFUL old black-and-white photo on the cover of Edward Klein's new book about the Kennedy marriage, All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy (406 pages.

All too human edward klein