Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter

Kennedy biographer Leaming (Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis) is unlikely to persuade readers who aren’t already Kennedy completists that their time is well spent in reading about the last decade of the short life of Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy (1920–1948). Kennedy’s childhood is largely skipped over, with Leaming presenting the 18-year-old daughter of the new U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain in 1938 as she’s introduced to the British aristocracy. The British aristocratic lifestyle waned during the interwar period and the “Little American Girl” became for them a symbol of their “vanished world.” The book traces Kennedy’s relationship with various scions of the nobility in detail, building up to her growing attachment to William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington. Their romance distresses her Catholic parents, who can’t countenance their daughter marrying a Protestant. Kennedy marries anyway, in 1944, but Hartington is killed in battle within a few months. Kennedy’s herself is killed in a plane crash in 1948 along with her married lover, Peter Fitzwilliam. Despite Leaming’s extensive interviews with the surviving members of Kennedy’s “aristocratic cousinhood,” she fails to make the case that such attention to Kennedy’s life is warranted; many will reach the last page wondering what was so special about Kennedy, apart from her last name. (Aug.)