Jackie Kennedy will forever be remembered as the dark-eyed beauty on the arm of JFK, the grief- stricken widow after his assassination and the betrayer of his memory when she married Aristotle Onassis. The perception is that this woman was famous by accidental associations. In this fact-filled biography, Sarah Bradford leaves the reader in no doubt that Jacqueline Bouvier was a formidable woman and would probably have achieved public recognition in her own right through, most likely, her work in publishing or, perhaps, through her love of literature and writing. Whether or which, her star would have risen and the lady herself, with her core of steel, would most definitely have been the engineer. The pre-JFK era can read almost like a soap opera - the Bouvier clan was not short of colourful characters or scenarios. Family jealousies and loyalties and the see-sawing between fabulous wealth and bankruptcy all contributed to the fashioning of America's Queen. This is quite the definitive biography and much more than a mere account of her life as JFK's wife and widow.