This collection of anecdotal stories by the people who know them best introduces Bill and Hillary to the nation as only friends can. The essays collectively place the Clintons into proper social, historical, and geographical context for anyone who wants to know the former First Family on a more personal level.
Before Bill Clinton became president, no reporter in America knew him better than Little Rock reporter Meredith Oakley. Time and again she watched him make campaign promises, break them, then lie to save face. Now, in this biography based on 12 years of personal files, Oakley presents the first factual, critical answer to the question, "What makes Bill Clinton tick?"
Two Arkansas teenagers are run over by a train. The state medical examiner rules they smoked themselves into "a marijuana-induced stupor" before lying down, side by side on the tracks. He rules the deaths accidental. Case closed. Except that when the parents of one get the bodies exhumed, new autopsies point to murder. That launches the mom of one of the boys on a journey that will lead her into a dark world of drugs and political corruption. In 2001, after this book's release, a U.S. court of appeals wrote: "The record in this case reads like a John Grisham novel." Shockingly, this story is true.
Who exactly is Bill Clinton, and why was he, of all the brilliant and ambitious men in his generation, the first in his class to reach the White House? Drawing on hundreds of letters, documents, and interviews, David Maraniss explores the evolution of the personality of our forty-second president from his youth in Arkansas to his 1991 announcement that he would run for the nation's highest office. In this richly textured and balanced biography, Maraniss reveals a complex man full of great flaws and great talents. First in His Class is the definitive book on Bill Clinton.
Straight from the heart, Roger Clinton, President Clinton's younger brother, candidly discusses the lives, times, and tragedies of the family of the most powerful man in the world. Photos.
In this devastating dual portrait of the former president and first lady, an investigative reporter reveals the untold secrets of the most ambitious yet scandalous partnership in the history of American politics.
What makes Bill Clinton tick? William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States is undoubtedly the greatest American enigma of our age -- a dark horse that captured the White House, fell from grace and was resurrected as an elder statesman whose popularity rises and falls based on the day's sound bytes. John Gartner's In Search of Bill Clinton unravels the mystery at the heart of Clinton's complex nature and why so many people fall under his spell. He tells the story we all thought we knew, from the fresh viewpoint of a psychologist, as he questions the well-crafted Clinton life story. Gartner, a therapist with an expertise in treating individuals with hypomanic temperaments, saw in Clinton the energy, creativity and charisma that leads a hypomanic individual to success as well as the problems with impulse control and judgment, which frequently result in disastrous decision-making. He knew, though, that if he wanted to find the real Bill Clinton he couldn't rely on armchair psychology to provide the answer. He knew he had to travel to Arkansas and around the world to talk with those who knew Clinton and his family intimately. With his boots on the ground, Gartner uncovers long-held secrets about Clinton's mother, the ambitious and seductive Virginia Kelley, her wild life in Hot Springs and the ghostly specter of his biological father, Bill Blythe, to uncover the truth surrounding Clinton's rumor-filled birth. He considers the abusive influence of Clinton's alcoholic stepfather, Roger Clinton, to understand the repeated public abuse he invited both by challenging a hostile Republican Congress and engaging in the clandestine affair with Monica Lewinsky that led to his downfall. Of course, there is no marriage more dissected than that of the Clintons, both in the White House and on the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign trail. Instead of going down familiar paths, Gartner looks at that relationship with a new focus and clearly sees, in Hillary's molding of Clinton into a more disciplined politician, the figure of Bill Clinton's stern grandmother, Edith Cassidy, the woman who set limits on him at an early age. Gartner brings Clinton's story up to date as he travels to Ireland, the scene of one of Clinton's greatest diplomatic triumphs, and to Africa, where his work with AIDS victims is unmatched, to understand Clinton's current humanitarian persona and to find out why he is beloved in so much of the world while still scorned by many at home. John Gartner's exhaustive trip around the globe provides the richest portrait of Clinton yet, a man who is one of our national obsessions. In Search of Bill Clinton is a surprising and compelling book about a man we all thought we knew.