Letters to Jackie

As seen on "NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," CNN, MSNBC, and in the "Boston Globe, New York Times," and "USA Today" It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century: the assassination of president John F. Kennedy Within seven weeks of president Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched. Now, in her selection of 250 of these astonishing letters, historian Ellen Fitzpatrick reveals a remarkable human record of that devastating moment, of Americans across generations, regions, races, political leanings, and religions, in mourning and crisis. Reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears, and their hopes, the authors of these letters wrote an elegy for the fallen president that captured the soul of the nation.