It was nearly fifty years ago, but it still has immediacy.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy brought an outpouring of letters to his widow, 1.5 million in total. A representative sampling of 200,000 of them were saved in Boston’s Kennedy Library, where they remained in boxes until recently, when historian Ellen Fitzpatrick spent five months reading through them.

She chose 250 of them for a book, Letters to Jackie, which releases today. It was featured in USA Today on Friday and on CNN Monday. It rose to #306 on Amazon; half the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet (it was not reviewed prepub).

Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.

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