For the better part of the past century there are two families who have captured the public's imagination, the British royals and the closest thing the U.S. has to royalty, the Kennedy clan. Much ink has been spilled on these two cultural and political institutions over the years, but no one has examined these two dynasties side by side. Journalist and royals expert Caroline Hallemann aims to do just that when the question of what role these dynasties play and whether we still need them looms large. Using deep archival research and original new interviews, Hallemann tells an intimate, multi-generational story of the relationship between the British royals and the Kennedys, with previously untold accounts of private connections, shared struggles, and public associations of two of the most famous families in modern history.

The Kennedys and the Windsors reveals how these two families drew inspiration, and at times admonition, from one another in ways that shaped their images, legacies, and indeed history. From Joe and Rose Kennedy's first introduction to the British monarchy, a swirl of parties, pageants and high cotton meetings that Rose claimed put her son, John, on the first rung to political office, to the moment Jackie and Elizabeth II found common ground as young mothers raising children in the public, to the agony JFK Jr. felt when Princess Diana was felled by the paparazzi and he watched helplessly as William and Harry had to grieve, as he did in front of the whole world.

The connections between these families are not coincidental, Hallemann reveals, as she also tells the larger story of why a dynasty matters, how it operates in a modern world, and how, whether built on tradition or ambition, it can impact history in significant ways.