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correspondent for the Chattanooga Times and Ben Bradlee wrote for Newsweek .
    The next two hours or more were devoted to drinks and banter and, occasionally, board games. “We played Chinese checkers, Monopoly, bridge,” recalled Charlie Bartlett. “Somebody said Jack played Monopoly like the property was real, and they were right. He loved winning, and he hated to lose even more. Jackie was the same way—very competitive, a born game-player. There was always a great deal of laughter, and everybody had a great time.”
    By way of after-dinner entertainment, they also screened new movies in the White House theater. Even though he regarded Jack as “the most urbane man I have ever met,” Bradlee had to confess that the president’s taste in movies was markedly middlebrow. “My mommy always watched cowboy movies with my daddy,” Caroline later told her teachers, “because my daddy liked cowboy movies. My mommy doesn’t like cowboy movies at all, but she watched them because she loves my daddy.” She didn’t have to watch for long; too restless to sit through an entire feature film, Jack usually excused himself after the first twenty minutes or so.

    TO BE SURE, IT WAS Jackie—not the president—who spearheaded a cultural renaissance in the nation’s capital by using the White House to showcase the arts. She invited stars of the Royal Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as Shakespearean actors and the world’s greatest classical musicians, to perform for visiting heads of state in the East Room.
    According to key Kennedy adviser Theodore Sorensen, JFK had “no interest in opera, dozed off at symphony concerts, and was bored by ballet.” (Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” was one of JFK’s favorite records, and the president asked that it be played repeatedly at private White House functions.)
    Still, Jack was immensely proud of his wife’s efforts and usually did his best to mask his distaste for what he privately derided as “longhair crap.” He certainly didn’t fool Caroline, who shared her mother’s love of ballet even as a child. “Daddy claps,” she said at the time, “but I don’t think he really likes it. He makes faces when he thinks no one is looking.”
    In fact, the high-spirited Kennedy kids were themselves often part of an evening’s entertainment. Several dinner guests arrived just as Caroline raced past them stark naked, with Maud Shaw in hot pursuit. Caroline “practically knocked us over,” one guest recalled. “Then she looked up with these huge eyes, looked back at the nanny, and shot off down the hall.” Caroline’s antics certainly kept Secret Service agents on their toes; members of the Kiddie Detail spent hours in hot pursuit of the first daughter as she ran from pillar to pillar firing off her cap pistol, or zipped down marble hallways on roller skates.
    Jack delighted in their shenanigans, and made a point of spending time with Caroline and John just before bedtime. “No matter who we were having dinner with,” Jackie later recalled. “No matter how important they were, Jack would turn to me and say, ‘Go get the children!’ And of course I’d have to bring them out in their underwear or their pajamas. . . . You know, the children were never bratty, but he liked to have them underfoot.”
    So did Jackie. While the president was more inclined to roughhouse—even at the risk of reinjuring his back—Jackie smothered them with hugs, kisses, and motherly concern no matter who was watching.
    Yet for all the warmth they openly displayed as young parents, the president and first lady were often strangely formal around each other—even in front of staff members who saw them every day. In part, this was due to Jack’s antipathy toward couples that were overly affectionate in public, and his deep-seated aversion to touching and being touched in a nonsexual way—an idiosyncrasy rooted in his childhood.
    “He never would hold hands in public,” Jackie