First published in 1974 and out of print for many years, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's autobiography is by turns conventional, tedious, intimately revealing, evasive, sugar-coated, tough-minded and touching. Now 104, she began her political life at the age of five, when her father, John Francis Fitzgerald, was elected to Congress; he later became mayor of Boston. In their warm foreword to this reissue, Rose's children-Edward Kennedy, Eunice Shriver, Patricia Lawford, Jean Smith-call her ``the best politician in our family,'' and indeed, she relives her prominent role in accompanying her husband, Joseph Kennedy, FDR's ambassador to the Court of St. James, to Great Britain as war clouds gathered over Europe, and her vigorous campaigning for her sons, John and Bobby, in 1960 and 1968. Strewn with quotes from letters, diaries and recollections by family members and Kennedy watchers, this conversational, unpretentious memoir is particularly interesting when Rose is discussing JFK's illnesses and injuries, raising her nine children, her mentally retarded daughter, Rosemary, and the deep religious faith that sustained her through personal tragedies. Photos. (Feb.)
