A Complicated Man
The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“An astonishing collection of 171 interviews with Clinton’s friends, foes, admirers, and detractors as well as reporters and political analysts.”—Booklist (starred review).
Though Bill Clinton has been out of office since 2001, public fascination with him continues unabated. Many books about Clinton have been published in recent years, but shockingly, no single-volume biography covers the full scope of Clinton’s life from the cradle to the present day, not even Clinton’s own account, My Life. More troubling still, books on Clinton have tended to be highly polarized, casting the former president in an overly positive or negative light.
In this, the first complete oral history of Clinton’s life, historian Michael Takiff presents the first truly balanced book on one of our nation’s most controversial and fascinating presidents. Through more than 150 chronologically arranged interviews with key figures—including Bob Dole, James Carville, and Tom Brokaw, among many others—A Complicated Man goes far beyond the well-worn party-line territory to capture the larger-than-life essence of Clinton the man. With the tremendous attention given to the Lewinsky scandal, it is easy to overlook the president’s humble upbringing, as well as his many achievements at home and abroad: the longest economic boom in American history, a balanced budget, successful intervention in the Balkans, and a series of landmark, if controversial, free-trade agreements. Through the candid recollections of Takiff’s many subjects, A Complicated Man leaves no area unexplored, revealing the most complete and unexpected portrait of our forty-second president published to date.
“Packed with fascinating personal perspective and testimony.”—Nigel Hamilton, bestselling and award-winning author of American Caesars
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oral historian and journalist Takiff (Brave Men, Gentle Heroes) offers a wealth of perspective to counter or at least complicate the prevailing, and simplistic, image many people hold of America's 42nd president, despite two prosperous terms and a decade of post-White House foreign relations work. Somewhat predictably, Takiff begins with Clinton's birth to a recently widowed mother in Hope, Ark. and ends, more or less, with wife Hillary Rodham Clinton's failure to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Throughout, Clinton's life is addressed by those who knew him, loved him, or, in some cases, loathed him. Chapters are introduced with snippets of conversation and deepened by excerpts of interviews, many of which Takiff conducted himself, with a wide range of people, from unknown residents of Hope to Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Tom Brokaw, Clinton staff members Leon Panetta, Dan Glickman, and Charlene Barshefsky, and many others. The author places everything in context and provides sufficient history to tell the full story, resulting in a book that reads like a conversation between 150 people gathered to reminisce about a complicated man.
