Letters to Jackie (e-book) (used book) | Ellen Fitzpatrick | bookbook.eu

Description

It is perhaps the most memorable moment from the 20th century—a moment that left a family and a nation mourning, a moment that many recall as their first historical memory—the assassination of President Kennedy.

Within seven weeks of the President’s death, Jacqueline Kennedy had already received over 800,000 condolence letters. In the two years following President Kennedy’s death, the volume of correspondence exceeded a million and half letters.

The letters, essentially untouched for 46 years, bring to life the hope, idealism, and sense of possibility JFK embodied to many Americans during his brief presidency, and how his death inspired a universal and profound sense of purpose and sadness, the feeling that our country had been changed forever.

Written in the extraordinary eloquence of so-called “ordinary” Americans, the letters constitute a remarkable human record-on elegant stationary, in poor handwriting, in pencil, in type, on simple lined writing paper, from across generations, nationalities, races, and religions.

Historian and Radcliffe Fellow Ellen Fitzpatrick culls 300 of these extraordinary letters, offering a snapshot of the United States as it existed in 1963, revealing the complexity of race relations and early progress against racism, the political and religious culture of the era.

In three parts, each with an introductory essay by Fitzpatrick—Americans’ vivid recollections of where they were when they heard about the assassination; views of Kennedy and the Presidency (specifically concerning race, war, politics, and aspirations for the country); meditations on the nature of life and death—Fitzpatrick illuminates the historical insights to be gained from the condolence letters, and draws contrasts to the early twenty-first century.