With this evocative and affectionate memoir, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the final surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, provides an intimate and illuminating look at a time long ago when she and her siblings, guided by their parents, laughed and discovered a great deal under one roof.

Prompted by interesting tidbits in the newspaper, Increased and Joe Kennedy would present questions with their 9 children on the dining room table. ‘Where could Amelia Earhart have eliminated?’ ‘How do you address this terrible about The Nine folks: Growing Up Kennedy drought?’ ‘What could you do about the troop motions in European countries?’ It was a nightly custom that helped form the Kennedys into who they would become.

Before Joe and Rose’s children emerged as leaders for the world stage, they were a loving circle of brothers and sisters who played football, swam, read, and pursued their interests. They were children inspired by parents who instilled in them a strong function ethic, deep like of nation, and intense gratitude for the sacrifices their ancestors made to arrive to America.’No whining with this home!’ was their father’s regular refrain. It had been his way of reminding them not to complain, to be grateful for what they had, and to surrender.

In her remarkable memoir, Kennedy Smith-the last surviving sibling-revisits this singular time in their lives. Filled with amazing anecdotes and vignettes, The Nine folks vividly depicts this huge, close-knit family throughout a different amount of time in American background. Kennedy Smith presents indelible, elegantly rendered portraits of her larger-than-life siblings and her parents. ‘They knew how exactly to cure our hurts, bind our wounds, listen to our woes, and help us take it easy,’ she writes. ‘We had been lucky kids indeed.’