Seven interviews given by Jacqueline Kennedy within months of her husband’s assassination are to be released for the first time.
Publisher Hyperion says the book, to be edited by Ms Kennedy’s daughter, features the former first lady talking about former president John F Kennedy’s plans for a second term.
She also talks about family life in the White House.
The 1964 series of interviews were given to Arthur Schlesinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning US historian and chronicler of the Kennedy family.
Caroline Kennedy, their only surviving child, decided to release the interviews timed to next year’s 50th anniversary of the slain president’s inauguration, Hyperion said.
She will edit the book to be released in September 2011 with three hours of audio recordings.
Jackie Kennedy had requested that the interviews, conducted in the first half of 1964, be kept sealed for an indefinite amount of time.
She married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968 and died in 1994.
The interviews had been intended for the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum as part of an oral history project that captured those close to him in the months after he was shot on November 22, 1963.
“My mother’s passion for history guided and informed her work in the White House,” Caroline Kennedy said in a statement.
“She believed in my father, his vision for America, and in the art of politics. She felt it was important to share her knowledge and excitement with future generations.”
The financial terms of the book deal have not been released.