PUBLISHING: THOSE PRYING EYES

WHAT DO WE KNOW OF the Kennedys? Better to ask: What don't we know? We know, ad infinitum if not ad nauseam, about the blackguard patriarch, the philandering but beloved President and his glamorous wife, their handsome son risen from the ashes of an aimless, if active, life to become a magazine editor. We know of their loves, their losses, their lapses and their favorite dressmakers. Flip through new memoirs by Gore Vidal and Benjamin Bradlee, and there they are again, appearing in vignettes that will be eagerly processed by a curious public.

Surely it is not a coincidence, then, that...