These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie

I lost interest in this book when it was written that Jackie's niece was christened at Westminster Abbey in London. Jackie's sister and her husband were Roman Catholics, they would not be allowed to christen a baby in the seat of the Church of England. The baby was christened at Westmister Cathedral, Roman Catholic, nearby....this is such an easy fact to check and yet it wasn't

As one with great interest in all things Kennedy, esp Jackie, I have read virtually every book written on either of them in every imaginable context. This book was a big disappointment as it contains no new information about either of them. It is just a reworking of old sources. The picture on the cover was the only thing in the book I had never seen before.

If you have read the author's book "Jack and Jackie, Portrait of an American Marriage" then basically with this new book you are just reading a truncated version of the earlier book. To title the book the "final year of Jack and Jackie is misleading because only the last quarter of the book deals with that final year and not at great depth either.The book is really about the last three years in the White House. No new revelations...a bit gossipy. Most insights from Jackie are,of course, gleaned from the recently released oral tapes she recorded soon after Dallas.But a good read and while it doesn't spare JFK's more reckless side it is not nasty. Note to author, the photos you stated were of JFK's forty-fifth birthday after the Marilyn Monroe serendade were actually of his forty-sixth and last birthday in May 1963.

Having written four best-selling books about JFK and his "tight knit little family," Christopher Andersen would seem to have exhausted the subject. Not so. "These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack and and Jackie" adds abundant new facts and fascinating perspectives on this golden couple's extraordinary odyssey. Perhaps the "most significant" new research Andersen was able to draw on was the gradual release between 1993 and 2012 of more than 260 hours of taped conversations in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, part of a system the president installed "to capture history being made in real time," says Andersen. Additionally, in 2011 Caroline Kennedy authorized the release of of eight and a half hours of conversation between Jackie, and the historian and JFK advisor Arthur Schlesinger, which Schlesinger himself thought might never be released. Coupled with a vast array of people in and outside the Kennedy administration that Andersen has interviewed in the past, or reinterviewed, we have what seems to this reader by far the most revealing and up-to-date portrait of the penultimate beautiful couple, who happened to be the President and First Lady of our country. It's a great read.

I love this book...so touching and insightful. I have read several books about the Kennedys but for the first time I finally get them as real people. Really riveting and wonderfully written.

I was reading a friend's copy, and got immediately drawn into the time and the personalities! So I just ordered my own copy so I could finish the second half! I could relive the spirit of Camelot, which, for many of us, was more energetic and hopeful than any era or administration since.

This is one of those celebrity style biographies that is not really history because it is poorly documented with the documentations to each chapter lumped into one paragraph. The author may have read all of those books, but since I have read a lot about the Kennedys myself, including some of the books he listed, I can usually tell when a quote is not right or when a quote never happened at all.

The author manages to fill this book with too many conversations, which always raises my eyebrow as to the authenticity of the conversations because it is almost impossible for any one person to recount so much of a conversation. It is my opinion, no I am certain, that much of the conversation is filled in by the fertile imagination of the author. I find it hard to believe that Pierre Salinger, Chuck Spaulding, Evelyn Lincoln, and other JFK associates really said some of the things they said in this book. I am accustomed to reading their quotes in "real" biography or history - and they don't talk about the subjects talked about in this book.

Also, he repeats a lot of old rumors as fact. That story about Joe Kennedy paying Jackie to stay with JFK. That is rumor. That has never been proven.

There are some things that just don't fit or they are embellished to achieve the author's intended result or are just flat inaccurate. Examples:
Chuck Spaulding's description of JFK and Jackie when the child they are holding needs a diaper change, they call for the nanny by first name: "Maud!" I have Maud Shaw's book, they never called her by first name. Both of them always called her Ms. Shaw.

And no JFK didn't get bored with feeding Caroline after 5 mintues, he got bored after 10 minutes according to Ms. Shaw.

I have Jacqueline Kennedy's Oral History book as well as the tapes. The incident with McGeorge Bundy meeting with her husband in his bedroom and describing Jackie running down the hall to the bedroom is inaccurate. Jackie said she had a nightgown on but she didn't describe it in anyway, least of all "diaphanous" as the author suggest. JFK never shouted "Get out" to her, but rather tried to wave her away, according to the Jackie's Oral History. What was the author trying to do, depict JFK as rude. Some of these complaints may seem small, but I just can't abide such inaccuracies.

It is ashame this book was on the best seller list. I don't recommend it, but if you do buy it, just read it with a grain of salt.

I am at a total loss to understand the positive and even glowing reviews of this book. It is poorly written, the writing style is strictly amateurish, articles read better in People magazine. The author's 'voice' and in particular Jack and Jackie's 'voices' are vapid and insipid .. surely these people spoke in more interesting ways and said more interesting things than this. It is poorly researched. The author will make a declaration in one sentence, and contradict it in the very next .. "Jackie blamed herself for the problem, she refused to assign any blame to Jack," and "Jackie then took it out on Jack, blamed him for everything, and never forgave him." In the same paragraph. The author does this repeatedly. What the book does do is to give a very close look at what an appalling person JFK was in his personal life, as if we didn't already know .. but, surprisingly, I didn't, fully. Now I do. It leaves one wondering why we ever thought these two people were attractive or admirable. Was that insight worth the read? No.

I agree no new news here, though I have never seen the book cover photo before.
This book is simply recycled with very few new tidbits.
Some simple fact checking that the author needed to do his Kennedy homework!
I adore the Kennedys & I was thrilled when I purchased this book however, instead the book fell flat and I was left disappointed.
A must read for beginners only

Advertising and marketing for this book was pretty misleading; anyone who has read a few books over the years about the Kennedys already knows what is contained in this poor rendition, released to take advantage of the 50th anniversary of the assassination, but containing nothing more than old news. Very disappointing; save your money and read old stuff online.