Barbara A. Perry, a well-known authority on the Kennedys, is Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. As part of her extensive research on the American presidency, she interviews prominent members of previous administrations. She has authored or edited fourteen books including Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch and Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier, among other works.

Training her eye on traits that other biographers have neglected and mining newly released diaries and letters, Barbara Perry captures Rose Kennedy's genuine contributions to her family's political dynasty. Rose's perfectionism created a family image that resonated in the political arena and new twentieth-century media. A socialite at her husband's side in pre-war London, she became an effective campaigner at home, reaching voters that Jack, Bobby and Teddy could not. For the first time, we see a complete portrait of Rose that adds depth and dimension to her legend. A stoic, devout presence in public, Rose sought solace from personal tragedies in compulsive shopping, travel and self-medication. Rose Kennedy is an unequalled book about a remarkable woman who nurtured an image that masked her family's inconvenient truths.