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Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the Kennedys by Peter Evans
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Peter Evans Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2005-04-26 ISBN: 0060580542 Number of pages: 368 Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks Product features: - ISBN13: 9780060580544
- Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the KennedysBook Review: The "Shot gun Wedding" Heard Around the world: Jackie O and Ari Onassis Summary: 5 Stars
Except for the garish cover jacket, this is a devilishly well-written and well-presented book. True enough it is "conspiracy fare," but with a flair: a la British style, where the conspiratorial plot is insinuated rather than unceremoniously stuffed down the reader's throat as uncontestable media-driven and "state sanctioned" fact.
The strength of the book however is not the conspiratorial plot, which in my view is mostly a sideshow to the main event. Its power lies in the excellent writing that exposes the utter shallowness of the pseudo-royal and nuevo-monied jet-setters, as they go about their desperately empty lives, trying to pump meaning into them by way of extra-marital sex, alcohol and drugs, gaudiness, world-class treachery, lavish globe-trotting cruises and parties, and mindless spending for spending sake, in short, the worse sort of debauchery. There was a time when such decadent hubris, and money-based royalty was to be envied as the "good life," but Peter Evan brings them and their phoniness back down to earth and it is not a pretty picture. When he finishes with them, using mostly their own words (as he very carefully mines most of his material from a host of their own memoirs), there is certainly very little left to envy about them.
At the epicenter of the story are the two "uber-egos" of RFK and Ari Onassis, locked into battle for over a generation, and who, despite all their power and wealth retained the social minds of a couple of juvenile delinquents. Their respective struggles and feuds bordered on the psychopathic, more befitting a couple of teenage gang leaders than respected world-class "prime movers." But this seemed not to have bothered either of them one iota, as they both continued obsessively committed to the utter destruction of the other.
According to the author, the seminal event triggering the feud was Onassis' paranoid suspicions that it was RFK's hidden hand responsible for scuttling his carefully laid plans to corner the oil tanker shipping market, first in Saudi Arabia, then in Haiti. Likewise, Bobby was equally worried and paranoid that Onassis, would use his tight-knit social connections (within the Kennedy clan via Jackie's sister and eventually via Jackie herself) to find out and use what dirt he could uncover, against the Kennedys, thereby scuttling first JFK's chances of being re-elected, and then RFK's chances of becoming President after his brother's assassination. These mutual suspicions eventually spilled over into "all out" psychological warfare and reached a crescendo in the run up to Onassis determined efforts to marry Jackie, which he eventually did. But not before RFK first forbid it, then to avoid a scandal (since the whole world already knew Onassis was screwing Jackie), insisted on it.
If you believe the author's version of the way events unfolded, RFK got the worse of this multi-decade series of vendettas that coalesced around JFK's widow's "shotgun marriage" to Onassis. What is insinuated (if only ever so lightly) is that Onassis, after marrying Jackie, used his Palestinian connections to pay for (though not set up) the hit that ended in RFK's assassination.
A la British style, one is of course expected to read between the lines and connect the dots for himself, which is fine if you are a non-American: this version then makes perfectly good sense. But if you live within U.S. borders, you can almost feel the other anti-RFK wheels grinding as they pre-position themselves (with Ari's 1.5-3.5 million dollars) to take advantage of the RFK-Onassis feud: And here we mean, LBJ/Hoover/Mob/Texas oil/CIA machinery, for instance.
Just as Evan-Prichard's "The Secret World of Bill Clinton," exposed the corruption surrounding Bill and Hilary Clinton, this book, written by another Englishman, attempts to tie up the loose ends surrounding the primal feud between Onassis and Bobby Kennedy. One does not need to be a conspiracy nut to enjoy a well-documented, well-told story, and this is it. Five stars
Summary of Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the Kennedys Peter Evans's biography of Aristotle Onassis, Ari, met with great acclaim when it was published in 1986. Ari provided the world with an unprecedented glimpse of the Greek shipping magnate's orbit of dizzying wealth, twisted intrigues, and questionable mores. Not long after the book appeared, however, Onassis's daughter Christina and his longtime business partner Yannis Georgakis hinted to Evans that he had missed the "real story" -- one that proved Onassis's intrigues had deadly results. "I must begin," Georgakis said, "with the premise that, for Onassis, Bobby Kennedy was unfinished business from way back..." His words launched Evans into the heart of a story that tightly bound Onassis not to Jackie's first husband, but to his ambitious younger brother Bobby. A bitter rivalry emerged between Bobby and Ari long before Onassis and Jackie had even met. Nemesis reveals the tangled thread of events that linked two of the world's most powerful men in their intense hatred for one another and uncovers the surprising role played by the woman they both loved. Their power struggle unfolds against a heady backdrop of international intrigue: Bobby Kennedy's discovery of the Greek shipping magnate's shady dealings, which led him to bar Onassis from trade with the United States; Onassis's attempt to control much of Saudi Arabia's oil; Onassis's untimely love affair with Jackie's married sister Lee Radziwill; and his bold invitation to First Lady Jackie to join him on his yacht -- without the president. Just as the self-made Greek tycoon gloried in the chance to stir the wrath of the Kennedys, they struggled unsuccessfully to break his spell over the woman who held the key to all of their futures. After Jack's death, Bobby became ever closer to Camelot's holy widow, and fought to keep her from marrying his sworn rival. But Onassis rarely failed to get what he wanted, and Jackie became his wife shortly after Bobby was killed. Through extensive interviews with the closest friends, lovers, and relatives of Onassis and the Kennedys, longtime journalist Evans has uncovered the shocking culmination of the Kennedy-Onassis-Kennedy love triangle: Aristotle Onassis was at the heart of the plot to kill Bobby Kennedy. Meticulously tracing Onassis's connections in the world of terrorism, Nemesis presents compelling evidence that he financed the assassination -- including a startling confession that has gone unreported for nearly three decades. Along the way, this groundbreaking work also daringly paints these international icons in all of their true colors. From Evans's deeply nuanced portraits of the charismatic Greek shipping magnate and his acquisitive iconic bride to his probing and revelatory look into the events that shaped an era, Nemesis is a work that will not be soon forgotten.
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