A short life of the author
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (born 27 November 1957) is an American author, attorney, and diplomat who is the only surviving child of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She has been, since her father’s assassination in 1963 when she was five years old, one of the most recognisable private citizens in American life — a woman who has navigated the unique burden of being a Kennedy with a dignity and discretion that contrasts sharply with the public dramas of much of her extended family.
Early Life
Caroline Kennedy’s childhood was shaped by events of historic magnitude. She was five years old when her father was assassinated in Dallas; her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., was two. She grew up under the protection of her mother, who devoted enormous energy to shielding her children from the press and from the mythologising apparatus that surrounded the Kennedy name. She attended the Brearley School in New York, Concord Academy in Massachusetts, and Radcliffe College (Harvard), where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1980. She later earned a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1988.
Legal and Civic Career
Kennedy worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before studying law. With Ellen Alderman, she co-authored two books of constitutional law — In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action (1991) and The Right to Privacy (1995) — that were praised for making constitutional issues accessible to general readers through vivid case studies. She served on the boards of numerous cultural and educational institutions, including the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Anthologies and Literary Work
Kennedy’s most distinctive contribution as an author has been a series of anthologies that reflect the literary culture she inherited from her mother. The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2001) is a collection of the poems that her mother loved and read aloud to her children — a deeply personal book that reveals Jackie Kennedy’s literary sensibility through her choice of verse. A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories, and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love (2003) is a compendium of American writing that reflects the civic idealism of the Kennedy tradition. She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems (2011) collects poetry about women’s experience. Poems to Learn by Heart (2013) is dedicated to the practice of memorising poetry.
These are not scholarly anthologies but personal ones — curated with taste and feeling, and informed by a genuine love of language that is clearly her mother’s legacy.
Diplomatic Career
In 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Kennedy as United States Ambassador to Japan, a position she held until 2017. She was the first woman to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Japan and was widely regarded as an effective and popular ambassador. In 2022, President Joe Biden appointed her as U.S. Ambassador to Australia, where she served until 2025.
The Kennedy Legacy
Caroline Kennedy’s public role has been defined by stewardship — of her family’s legacy, of the Kennedy Library, of the values of public service and cultural literacy that her parents embodied. She has avoided the tabloid catastrophes and political controversies that have afflicted other members of her generation of Kennedys, and she has used her influence primarily in the service of education, the arts, and democratic civic life.
Her brief consideration for appointment to Hillary Clinton’s vacated U.S. Senate seat in 2008 ended when she withdrew her name from consideration, in a process that attracted significant media attention and criticism of her public speaking in political settings.
Collecting Kennedy
In Our Defense (1991, Morrow) and The Right to Privacy (1995, Knopf) are affordable. The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2001, Hyperion) is the most popular. Signed copies are relatively scarce, as Kennedy does not do frequent public book signings. Items bearing both Caroline Kennedy’s signature and her mother’s are extremely valuable in the Kennedy memorabilia market.