Jackie O Introduces Her Latest Pride and Joy

In recent weeks, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has found herself in the news for reasons beyond her control.

First, a woman was arrested and taken to a psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital after allegedly stalking the former First Lady’s New York apartment.

Next, Onassis was thrown from a horse in Virginia and spent a night in a hospital.

And then, the world marked the 30th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on the same day an Indiana man with a gun was arrested while looking for Onassis’ weekend home in New Jersey’s horse country.

But, on a cold evening last week, Onassis looked every inch the unruffled hostess as she beamed and mingled and introduced her party guests to Naveen Patnaik, author of “The Garden of Life,” which she edited at Doubleday.

Asked to tell the story behind the book, subtitled “An Introduction to the Healing Plants of India,” Onassis was happy to do so.

This is her second book with Patnaik. “I met Naveen when I went to India several years ago,” she said. “We were planning a book in connection with the Festival of India and the exhibition ‘The Costumes of Royal India’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Originally, we thought we would show the costumes in miniatures, but Naveen just knew all these people. He took us everywhere.”

Patnaik opened doors to families and other sources who might otherwise have been reluctant to display their old costumes and other treasures--and this had helped Onassis and Doubleday to produce “A Second Paradise: Indian Courtly Life 1590-1947” in 1985.

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The book showcased the opulence of royal India in the 18th and 19th centuries, with text by Patnaik, rare photographs and watercolors re-creating the period.

“So we did that, and we stayed in touch,” Onassis continued. “He is a friend. And then, we thought of this.”

“The Garden of Life” ($35) explores the history and the therapeutic qualities of 70 Indian plants, from banyan to cumin to sandalwood, all of which are lushly depicted in commissioned paintings.

Although the evening’s invitation bore the name of Doubleday President Stephen Rubin and Onassis, the party at the home of the Consulate General of India was not designed to salute the modest senior editor, whose other books include Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalk” and Edvard Radzinsky’s “The Last Tsar.”( Another of her books is a new collection of magazine pieces, “The Best of Rolling Stone: 25 Years of Journalism on the Edge.”)

In a rare, extended conversation with Publishers Weekly last spring, Onassis said she is wary about promoting the books she edits but conceded: “I’ll go to a publication party if it will help.”

Told of last week’s gathering for “The Garden of Life,” one of her colleagues said: “When Mrs. Onassis acts as a hostess like that, it means two things: that the book is important to her and that she is especially proud of the book.”

So noted.

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On the Racks: In case you didn’t know by now, Tom Hanks stars in a new TriStar movie, “Philadelphia.” With press relations in perfect tune, the project has placed Hanks (and co-star Denzel Washington) on a grand slam of magazine covers, the Advocate, Premiere, Esquire--and Philadelphia, naturally . . . Spalding Gray’s new monologue, “Gray’s Anatomy,” being performed by the author at Lincoln Center, has been published in a Vintage paperback . . . Writer-director Jane Campion’s screenplay for “The Piano,” the much-praised Miramax film, has been published in paperback as a Miramax Books / Hyperion title, described as the first in a series of books from the independent film company . . . And those charmed by “The Age of Innocence” may be knocked out by a coffee-table companion of the same name that contains the screenplay, photos and illustrations from the Victorian Age, lush movie stills and historical notes. The Newmarket Press book, written by director Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks, is list priced at $45.

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A Respectful Nod to Joey: The Washington Times, the newspaper owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, was impressed by Joey Buttafuoco after he recently pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of Amy Fisher.

In a jailhouse interview, Buttafuoco told “A Current Affair”: “Sometimes lust takes me over. It’s very painful.”

To which the newspaper, in a short editorial, says:

“How refreshing to find someone who admits to an old-fashioned sin, rather than claim victimhood for himself.”