Governors - U.S. Political Biography, Arkansas - State & Local History, Presidents of the United States - Biography, U.S. Politics & Government - 1992-2001
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Overview
Bill Clinton, forty-second president of the United States, is the quintessential baby boomer: on the one hand blessed with a near-genius IQ, on the other, beset by character flaws that made his presidency a veritable soap opera of high ideals, distressing incompetence, model financial stewardship, and domestic misbehavior. In an era of cultural civil war, the Clinton administration fed the public an almost daily diet of scandal and misfortune.Who is Bill Clinton, though, and how did this baby-boom saga begin? Clinton’s upbringing in Arkansas and his student years at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale universities help us to see his life not only as a personal story but as the story of modern America.
Behind the closed doors of the house on the hill above Park Avenue in Hot Springs, the struggle between Clinton’s stepfather and mother became ultimately unbearable, causing Virginia to move out and divorce Roger Clinton. Dreading confrontation, Bill Clinton excelled in almost every field save athletics. But the fabled success of the scholarship boy would be marred by the decisions he came to make regarding Vietnam and military service—choices that haunt him to this day.
We watch with a mixture of alarm, fascination, and awe as Bill Clinton does so much that is right—and so much that is wrong. He sets his cap for the star student at Yale, young Hillary Rodham, seducing her with his dreams of a better America and an aw-shucks grin. Wherever he goes, he charms and disarms—young and old, men and women...and more women. He becomes a law professor straight out of college; he contests a congressional election in his twenties—and almost wins it. He becomes attorney general of his state and within two years is set to become the youngest-ever governor of Arkansas, at only thirty-two.
Yet, always, there is a curse, a drive toward personal self-destruction—and with that the destruction of all those who are helping him on his legendary path. His affair with Gennifer Flowers strains his marriage and later nearly scuttles his bid for the presidency. He is thrown out of the governor’s office after only one term and suffers a life-shaking crisis of confidence. Though with the stalwart help of a female chief of staff he regains his crown, it is clear that Bill Clinton’s charismatic career is a ceaseless tightrope walk above the forces that threaten to pull him down—the most potent of them residing in his own being.
Imbued with sympathy, deep intelligence, and the storyteller’s art, this extraordinary biography helps us, at last, to understand the real Bill Clinton as he stumbles and withdraws from the 1988 presidential nomination race but enters it four years later, to make one of the most astonishing bids for the presidency in the twentieth century: the climax of this gripping political, social, and scandalous journey.
From the Hardcover edition.
Editorials
Library Journal
The author of JFK: Reckless Youth can surely take on the equally reckless Clinton. This first of two volumes examines Clinton's start. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
An overblown (and this is but the first volume, ending with the crushing defeat of Bush I), often out of tune, but oddly fascinating account of William Jefferson Clinton’s pre–White House life and career. Hamilton, a British biographer (JFK: Reckless Youth, 1992, etc.) writing for a British audience (whence words like "podgy" and "gramophone"), seems uncertain about whether to scorn Billy Blythe (for so Clinton was born) as colonial white trash or to admire him for his many and evident gifts, and so his long narrative lurches between the poles of condemnation and approbation. Hamilton is also maddeningly given to sweeping psychologizing: young Bill Clinton, as he became along about August 1962 with his bohemian mother’s remarriage, was drawn to politics out of psychic necessity, born of the need to please and be loved, maybe to prove the schoolyard bullies wrong; he was shaped in equal measure by the Bible-solid town of Hope and the iniquitous den of Warm Springs; and so on. As grudging in his praise as Sidney Blumenthal is lavish, Hamilton nonetheless gives Clinton high marks for hard work, intellectual brilliance, mastery of political skills, and, well, persistence in overcoming, through charm or plain steamrolling, just about anyone who stood in his path. Along the way, Hamilton turns in any number of juicy, telling anecdotes: while at Oxford, for instance, Clinton offers his telephone number to the visiting firebrand Germaine Greer, "in case you ever decide to give bourgeois men another chance." Hamilton also offers a refreshing outsider’s perspective on several issues that have divided American commentators, wisely observing that almost no politician of Clinton’s generation has cleanhands on the matter of Vietnam (though he chides Clinton for not having lived up to his ROTC contract) and hinting that Clinton’s sexual drive should not particularly bother grownups (though the endless lying should). Yet Hamilton also scoops up innuendo, mostly on matters sexual, that will make serious students of the Clinton era cringe. Still, for the moment it’s the most complete life yet of the man, and though it will at turns puzzle both fans and detractors of Clinton and his legacy, it’s well worth reading for all concerned. Agent: Owen Laster/William MorrisBook Details
Published
September 30, 2003
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
816
ISBN
9781588363213