A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer by Nina Burleigh Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer
Book Review: On a Soon to Be Released New Book...
Summary: 2 Stars
As others have said in earlier reviews, this is a tediously written book, on a deliriously fascinating subject. How one could have possibly made the subject boring is beyond imagining, yet that is exactly what has occurred in Nina Burleigh's accounting of Mary Pinchot Meyer's bigger-than-life, art and politics filled world. For those looking for a better rendering of the subject, reviews for the soon-to-be-released book "Mary's Mosaic: Mary Pinchot Meyer & John F. Kennedy and their Vision for World Peace," by Peter Janney, are looking very good. Not only are we offered a new biography on one of the most under-known, captivating women of the 20th C., but we are being given an entirely new perspective on that life, one that, in all her coverage, Burleigh seems to have entirely missed. (Perhaps that is not quite fair. It seems possible that Burleigh may have covered the subject, but that, in my haste to be once and finally done with the book, I skipped over whatever was said. My inherent feeling is that it is simply too contemplative an idea for her to have covered it in such a complexly written, yet paradoxically superficial and derived book.)
The new book, at least through its title, as well as the few reviews that have already been written about it, appear to offer the same perspective, that, even more than his father, mother, or wife, it was Mary Meyer who held the swaying influence over John Kennedy's personal views on leadership and international peace. For one who lived through those times, to learn that this influence came at just the right time in our chosen leader's life, when those views would be what saved the world from what seemed, at least at the time, an inescapable, horrific self-annihilation, is emotionally satisfying, spiritually refreshing, and yet utterly mind-boggling, all at the same time. Enough so, in fact, to almost completely forgive Burleigh for the banality and flatness of her writing, as it was through her book that I was most fully introduced to the Meyer's tale. That introduction may have proven, ultimately, unfulfilling, but I am glad for it, nonetheless. The story of Mary Meyer is one that has quietly, yet completely, affected my own personal history, and is something of which I still, even now, in my latter years, have an insatiable yearning to learn. For the good or bad of it, it is through the efforts of Nina Burleigh that I can now hardly wait to read Jaffey's soon-to-be-released book. In particular, the reviewers all make special mention the final chapter, which, if it lives up to the hype, I feel certain will prove its most controversial. In it, we are assured, not only of an answer to Mary Meyer's assassination- long-sought by we thousand's of fans of Mary Pinchot Meyer's life, fully decades after it was stolen from her- but that that answer will be one wholly new and unsolicited within the mainstream conspiracy theorist genre. Without its long-held tradition of blaming the CIA, organized crime, or any of the usual Black Ops groups (supposedly so far underground and undercover that they do not have identities at which fanatics can point their angry fingers of blame), I'm not sure how well such a solution will be accepted, but do know that I'm already excited at the possibility of an answer, especially one that is being touted to fit the facts and clues surrounding Meyer's long-cold murder.
Just imagine it: a well-written biography, filled with intrigue, plotting, and collusion on the subject of a beautiful artist/social activist, her association with the leader of, unarguably, one of the most important political administrations of the 20th C., as well as her consequent murder, coming only months after the tragic fall of that same regime, and the assassination of that same leader, plus the unexpected resolution to that murder. I am actually sorry "well-written" cannot be said of the Burleigh volume, but the thought that that all the above things are what we will be offered by Peter Jaffey's book is enough to make this conspiracy fanatic's head swoon with all the possibilities. It is, I must admit, also enough to get me to keep my Burleigh volume close at hand and not sell or trade it at my local used book store. While I was sorely disappointed that it did not give me the joys and sorrows I was hoping to find in such a tragic story, at least I do trust, from the quality of work that it offers, that it can be used for fact-checking against any future books that may actually prove to be the better written, yet offer less potentially credible research.
Book Review: not all we thought
Summary: 5 Stars
President Kennedy was not all we thought at the time. We reverd him, his family life and all that he did. This is an eye opening book and as such, necessary reading for the times we lived through with rose colored glasses.
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