Caroline Kennedy Popular Books

Caroline Kennedy Biography & Facts

Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (born November 27, 1957) is an American author, attorney, and diplomat serving as the United States ambassador to Australia since 2022. Kennedy previously served in the Obama administration as the United States ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017. She is a member of the Kennedy family, the only surviving child of US president John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Less than a month before Caroline's third birthday, her father won the 1960 presidential election. She spent her early childhood years in the White House during his presidency, and was almost six when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The following year, she and her brother John F. Kennedy Jr. moved with their mother Jacqueline to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Caroline attended grade school. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and worked at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. She later earned a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. Most of Kennedy's professional life has been in law, politics, education reform, and charitable work. She has also acted as a spokesperson for her family's legacy, especially that of her father, and co-authored two books with Ellen Alderman on civil liberties. Early in the primary race for the 2008 presidential election, Kennedy and her uncle, Ted Kennedy, endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama. She later stumped for him in Florida, Indiana, and Ohio, served as co-chair of his Vice Presidential Search Committee, and addressed the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. After Obama selected United States senator Hillary Clinton to serve as secretary of state, Kennedy expressed interest in being appointed to Clinton's vacant Senate seat from New York, but later withdrew from consideration for personal reasons. In 2013, President Obama appointed Kennedy as the United States ambassador to Japan. Eight years later, Joe Biden appointed Kennedy as United States ambassador to Australia and she took office following her confirmation on June 10, 2022. Early life White House years Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born by caesarean section on November 27, 1957, at New York Hospital in Manhattan's Upper East Side to John Fitzgerald Kennedy (then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts) and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy. She is named after her maternal aunt, Lee Radziwill, and maternal great-grandmother, Caroline Ewing Bouvier. A year before Caroline's birth, her parents had a stillborn daughter. She had a younger brother, John Jr., who was born just before her third birthday in 1960. Another brother, Patrick, died two days after his premature birth in 1963. Caroline lived with her parents in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. during the first three years of her life. When Caroline was three years old, the family moved to the White House after her father was sworn in as president of the United States. Caroline frequently attended kindergarten in classes that were organized by her mother, and she was often photographed riding her pony "Macaroni" around the White House grounds. One such photo in a news article inspired singer-songwriter Neil Diamond to write his song, "Sweet Caroline", which he revealed when performing it for Caroline's 50th birthday. As a small child, Caroline received numerous gifts from dignitaries, including a puppy from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and a Yucatán pony from Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. A short-lived comic strip was created about her. Historians described Caroline's childhood personality as "a trifle remote and a bit shy at times" yet "remarkably unspoiled." "She's too young to realize all these luxuries", her paternal grandmother, Rose Kennedy, said of her. "She probably thinks it's natural for children to go off in their own airplanes. But she is with her cousins, and some of them dance and swim better than she. They do not allow her to take special precedence. Little children accept things". When Caroline's father was assassinated in 1963, nanny Maud Shaw took her and John Jr. from the White House to the home of their maternal grandmother, Janet Bouvier Auchincloss, who insisted that Shaw be the one to tell Caroline about her father's assassination. That evening, Caroline and John Jr. returned to the White House, and while Caroline was in bed, Shaw broke the news to her. Shaw soon found out that Jacqueline had wanted to be the one to tell the two children, which caused a rift between Shaw and Jacqueline. On December 6, two weeks after the assassination, Jacqueline, Caroline, and John Jr. moved out of the White House and returned to Georgetown. Their new home became a tourist attraction and the family left Georgetown the following year. They later moved to a penthouse apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side. Later childhood years In 1967, Caroline christened the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in a widely publicized ceremony in Newport News, Virginia. Over that summer, Jacqueline took the children on a six-week "sentimental journey" to Ireland, where they met President Éamon de Valera and visited the Kennedy ancestral home at Dunganstown. In the midst of the trip, Caroline and John were surrounded by a large number of press photographers while playing in a pond. The incident caused their mother to telephone Ireland's Department of External Affairs and request the issuing of a statement that she and the children wanted to be left in peace. As a result of the request, further attempts by press photographers to photograph the threesome ended with arrests by local police and the photographers being jailed. Caroline and John Jr.'s uncle Robert F. Kennedy became a major presence in both children's lives following their father's assassination, and Caroline saw Robert as a surrogate father. However, when her uncle was assassinated in 1968, Jacqueline sought a means of protecting her children, stating: "I hate this country. I despise America and I don't want my children to live here anymore. If they're killing Kennedys, my kids are the number one targets. I have the two main targets. I want to get out of this country". Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis several months later and she and the children moved to Skorpios, his Greek island. The next year, 11-year-old Caroline attended the funeral of her grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Her cousin, David, asked her about her feelings towards her mother's new husband and she replied, "I don't like him". In 1970, Jacqueline wrote her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy a letter stating that Caroline had been without a godfather since Robert Kennedy's death and would like Ted to assume the role. Ted began making regular trips from Washington to New York to see Caroline, where she was in school. In 1971, Caroline returned to the White House for the first time since her father's assassination when she was invited by .... Discover the Caroline Kennedy popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Caroline Kennedy books.