Former President Bill Clinton speaks intimately over seven years to his long-time friend, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, about what it's like to be president. Providing illuminating commentaries on major issues, these conversations depict Clinton as a principled man with a restless intellect. b&w photographs.
Transcribing and selecting the most stunning moments from hundreds of hours of newly released LBJ tapes, Beschloss has added another permanent treasure to the American historical record. Throughout this incredible narrative, he provides keen commentary and historical contexts, revealing just how profoundly LBJ changed the presidency--and America itself.
The Clinton Tapes was a secret project, initiated by Clinton, to preserve for future historians an unfiltered record of presidential experience. During his eight years in office, Clinton met with Taylor Branch in the White House, usually late at night, to answer questions and tell stories. Branch recorded seventy-nine of their dialogues to compile a trove of raw information about a presidency as it happened. Branch then recorded his own detailed recollections immediately after each session, covering not only the subjects discussed but also the look and feel of each evening with the president. Their discussions were unpredictable, intense, and candid. At any given moment the president could leap from memories to a current crisis or problems with his daughter's homework. The resultant text captures Clinton from many angles. Branch's firsthand narrative is confessional, unsparing, and personal. What should an objective prompter say when the President of the United States seeks advice, argues facts, or lodges complaints against the press? The relationship that emerges from these interviews is dynamic, both affectionate and charged, with flashes of anger and humor. President Clinton drives the history, but this story is also about two friends.
Twenty years after the Starr Report and the Clinton impeachment, former special prosecutor Ken Starr finally shares his definitive account of one of the most divisive periods in American history. You could fill a library with books about the scandals of the Clinton administration, which eventually led to President Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives. Bill and Hillary Clinton have told their version of events, as have various journalists and participants. Whenever liberals recall those years, they usually depict independent counsel Ken Starr as an out-of-control, politically driven prosecutor. But as a New York Times columnist asked in 2017, "What if Ken Starr was right?" What if the popular media in the 1990s completely misunderstood Starr's motives, his tactics, and his ultimate goal: to ensure that no one, especially not the president of the United States, is above the law? Starr -- the man at the eye of the hurricane -- has kept his unique perspective to himself for two full decades. In this long-awaited memoir, he finally sheds light on everything he couldn't tell us during the Clinton years, even in his carefully detailed "Starr Report" of September 1998. Contempt puts you, the reader, into the shoes of Starr and his team as they tackle the many scandals of that era, from Whitewater to Vince Foster's death to Travelgate to Monica Lewinsky. Starr explains in vivid detail how all those scandals shared a common thread: the Clintons' contempt for our system of justice. This book proves that Bill and Hillary Clinton weren't victims of a so-called "vast right-wing conspiracy." They played fast and loose with the law and abused their powers and privileges. Today, from the #MeToo aftermath and Russiagate to President Trump’s impeachment trial, the office of the American presidency is in crisis—and Starr’s insights are more relevant now than ever.
“An engaging, beautifully synthesized page-turner” (Slate). The #1 New York Times bestseller and Time #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most personal memoir yet, about the 2016 presidential election. In this “candid and blackly funny” (The New York Times) memoir, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. She takes us inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. “At her most emotionally raw” (People), Hillary describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward. She tells readers what it took to get back on her feet—the rituals, relationships, and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. In this “feminist manifesto” (The New York Times), she speaks to the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye, the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance, and the double standard confronting women in politics. Offering a “bracing... guide to our political arena” (The Washington Post), What Happened lays out how the 2016 election was marked by an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary. By analyzing the evidence and connecting the dots, Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect our values and our democracy in the future. The election of 2016 was unprecedented and historic. What Happened is the story of that campaign, now with a new epilogue showing how Hillary grappled with many of her worst fears coming true in the Trump Era, while finding new hope in a surge of civic activism, women running for office, and young people marching in the streets.
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, the second part of his epic trilogy on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement. In the second volume of his three-part history, a monumental trilogy that began with Parting the Waters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Taylor Branch portrays the Civil Rights Movement at its zenith, recounting the climactic struggles as they commanded the national stage. Beginning with the Nation of Islam and conflict over racial separatism, Pillar of Fire takes the reader to Mississippi and Alabama: Birmingham, the murder of Medgar Evers, the "March on Washington," the Civil Rights Act, and voter registration drives. In 1964, King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Branch's magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King's leadership, are among the nation's enduring achievements. In bringing these decades alive, preserving the integrity of those who marched and died, Branch gives us a crucial part of our history and heritage.
At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 is the final volume in Taylor Branch's magnificent history of America in the years of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, recognized universally as the definitive account and ultimate recognition of Martin Luther King's heroic place in the nation's history. The final volume of Taylor Branch's monumental, much honored, and definitive history of the Civil Rights Movement (America in the King Years), At Canaan's Edge covers the final years of King's struggle to hold his non-violent movement together in the face of factionalism within the Movement, hostility and harassment of the Johnson Administration, the country torn apart by Vietnam, and his own attempt (and failure) to take the Freedom Movement north. At Canaan's Edge traces a seminal era in our defining national story, freedom. The narrative resumes in Selma, crucible of the voting rights struggle for black people across the South. The time is early 1965, when the modern Civil Rights Movement enters its second decade since the Supreme Court's Brown decision declared segregation by race a violation of the Constitution. From Selma, King's non-violent Movement is under threat from competing forces inside and outside. Branch chronicles the dramatic voting rights drives in Mississippi and Alabama, Meredith's murder, the challenge to King from the Johnson Administration and the FBI and other enemies. When King tries to bring his Movement north (to Chicago), he falters. Finally we reach Memphis, the garbage strike, King's assassination. Branch's magnificent trilogy makes clear why the Civil Rights Movement, and indeed King's leadership, are among the nation's enduring achievements.
"The urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy....To renew America, we must be bold...must revitalize our democracy....Together with our friends and allies, we will work to shape change, lest it engulf us." With those inaugural words, William Jefferson Clinton began his first term as President of the United States. Now, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a former White House aide provide the first penetrating, thoughtful evaluation of President Clinton's leadership. Before he was voted into office, Bill Clinton told the authors in an interview that he wanted to be a transforming leader, a president who would fashion real and lasting change in peoples' lives, in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But how has this president, who has sought to lead from the center with his vice president, Al Gore, and the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, measured up against his own stated goals and the aspirations and performances of other presidents since World War II? From the health care debacle and the 1994 midterm elections that swept the Republicans to a majority in both houses of Congress to the effect of scandal and impeachment on his ability to govern, Dead Center examines the leadership style of Bill Clinton and offers a forceful challenge to the strategy of centrism. There is no more respected presidential historian than James MacGregor Burns, author of several acclaimed books on leadership and the Pulitzer Prize-winning study of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Georgia J. Sorenson adds her own insights as a political scientist and presidential scholar. Their combined efforts have resulted in an incisive, informative, authoritative work and an absorbing read.
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.