Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era

Laurence Leamer is an American author and journalist best known for his biographies of American political families. Born in Chicago, Leamer was raised in upstate New York and received a BA in history from Antioch College in 1964. After college, Leamer served with the Peace Corps in Nepal for two years before being awarded a Ford Fellowship for graduate study in international development at the University of Oregon. While at Oregon, he began writing magazine articles and was awarded an International Fellowship at the Columbia School of Journalism. After graduation, his work was published in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, and Playboy, many of the same publications that published the work of Truman Capote.

Most of Leamer’s 19 books focus on American politics and celebrity culture. He is widely regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family. The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (1994) details the lives of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy, and Jackie Kennedy, while The Kennedy Men: Rules of the Father (2001) focuses on Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy. Leamer’s research on the family informs his depictions of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, in Capote’s Women.