President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public.

It shows us the progress of a remarkable American, who, through his own enormous energies and efforts, made the unlikely journey from Hope, Arkansas, to the White House—a journey fueled by an impassioned interest in the political process which manifested itself at every stage of his life: in college, working as an intern for Senator William Fulbright; at Oxford, becoming part of the Vietnam War protest movement; at Yale Law School, campaigning on the grassroots level for Democratic candidates; back in Arkansas, running for Congress, attorney general, and governor.

We see his career shaped by his resolute determination to improve the life of his fellow citizens, an unfaltering commitment to civil rights, and an exceptional understanding of the practicalities of political life.

We come to understand the emotional pressures of his youth—born after his father’s death; caught in the dysfunctional relationship between his feisty, nurturing mother and his abusive stepfather, whom he never ceased to love and whose name he took; drawn to the brilliant, compelling Hillary Rodham, whom he was determined to marry; passionately devoted, from her infancy, to their daughter, Chelsea, and to the entire experience of fatherhood; slowly and painfully beginning to comprehend how his early denial of pain led him at times into damaging patterns of behavior.

President Clinton’s book is also the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written—encompassing not only the high points and crises but the way the presidency actually works: the day-to-day bombardment of problems, personalities, conflicts, setbacks, achievements.

It is a testament to the positive impact on America and on the world of his work and his ideals.

It is the gripping account of a president under concerted and unrelenting assault orchestrated by his enemies on the Far Right, and how he survived and prevailed.

It is a treasury of moments caught alive, among them:

• The ten-year-old boy watching the national political conventions on his family’s new (and first) television set.

• The young candidate looking for votes in the Arkansas hills and the local seer who tells him, “Anybody who would campaign at a beer joint in Joiner at midnight on Saturday night deserves to carry one box. . . . You’ll win here. But it’ll be the only damn place you win in this county.” (He was right on both counts.)

• The roller-coaster ride of the 1992 campaign.

• The extraordinarily frank exchanges with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.

• The delicate manipulation needed to convince Rabin and Arafat to shake hands for the camera while keeping Arafat from kissing Rabin.

• The cost, both public and private, of the scandal that threatened the presidency.

Here is the life of a great national and international figure, revealed with all his talents and contradictions, told openly, directly, in his own completely recognizable voice. A unique book by a unique American.


From the Hardcover edition.

Even though I had the chance to live through the years that Bill Clinton was president, I cannot believe how much of the Clinton years I had forgotten. Bill has a great sense of humor and is a great storyteller with compassion, grace and style. He is one of my favorite presidents of all time. A great read. It made me want to know more about his early years growing up in Arkansas.

As someone who has written a lot on Bill Clinton I eagerly awaited the release of his biography. It met most of my expectations although at times he put in far more than I needed to or cared to know. Nigel Hamilton does an excellent job in his early years biography and it matches most of what Clinton talks about here. The need for Bill Clinton to please everyone around him really comes out in his own biography and while I feel he skirts around his disagreement with Carter and does not express the anger that most sources say he felt it is a very honest attempt. I would have liked more details about his college years and meeting Hillary which he jumps past fairly quickly and gets into their political relationship. It is very well written which is to be expected from someone as educated as Bill Clinton.

As I said to my fellow authors earlier, Bill's one of us. He's a writer. This isn't about agreeing with his politics, by the way. It's about, as the book title implies, his life. Which, as luck would have it, does feature a whole lot of politics. I can picture professors building courses around this book, and I think that'is probably a good thing. In China we use FORREST GUMP, which is quite good, but in the US let's go for the gold. MY LIFE goes way below the surface.

Bill Clinton has an amazing memory, in addition to detailed notes and journals and such, and he takes us on a very candid journey. It's almost like being an imbedded journalist. We start with a country boy and many southern tales, then move through some "small town hick in the big city" tales that include Oxford and the soul-searching of the Vietnam War years, then finally through his lengthy political career, one year at a time. Campaigns for others, then for himself. A lot of politics when he's in office.

Politics doesn't simply bore me. I find them downright painful. But I must admit that I've wondered where presidents come from. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a writer, a teacher or perhaps a cop. Or an NFL quarterback, but I realized early on that might be a tad unrealistic. But president? It never occurred to me. Why did it occur to the poor bumbling fat kid from Arkansas? Read his book and you'll know the answer.

I admire anyone who can pull together a wide variety of seemingly contradictory influences into a consistent whole. You've seen me try to do it in this newsletter, and you can see Bill Clinton do it in this book. Those who equate "thinking" with "waffling" just don't get it. Quite probably they quit subscribing to THIS rag ages ago, if they ever found it at all. So I don't write for them. I write for you.

I'm reaching the age where it's getting very hard to find a non-fiction writer older than me writing about events that I find interesting. Bill qualifies. It's very good to watch history unfold through his eyes. The events I lived through and remember, the ones that preceded those, the ones I just plain missed because I was too busy with other things. One of life's little ironies is that I missed some of Bill's efforts to unburden the lower class because I was too busy shouldering that burden.

This is a 957-page monster, folks. It's a big-un, and it's largely narrative. I've been at it for maybe two weeks. There's no law saying you can't take longer. Stop to read something else, come back to it later, whatever. I'm glad I'm reading it. I think you will be too. (It helps to be American.) Heck, I think you already have read it and I'm just preaching to the choir over here. But hey, Mikey likes it.

I like a story that takes its time and give me the details to make my own conclusions and that is just what Bill Clinton has done with his book. I didn't vote for him either time he ran for national office and I still enjoyed this book.

Okay, so the man didn't exactly need redeeming in my eyes. I thought him a kind of hero before I picked up this book and think of him that way still, though now I have better reasons for it than his public humility, esteem on the world stage, and deft financing of public schools across the country. In his biography, Clinton plies his stock-in-trade, or better, his skill in spades, charm, to his life, both private and political, early and late. When was the last time a public figure acted with such transparency regarding his motives, failures, and frustrations? If he is guilty here of recasting his life favorably, as most biographers eventually are, it is not the usual kind of favoritism that has a large figure becoming mythic, larger-than-life. It is rather that he is uber-authentic, having been born of an alcoholic dad, and living aside an estranged and drug-addicted brother; these snapshots tend to emphasize his claim to the title "the nation's first black president," a street kid who made good through excessive pulling of bootstraps. Larger-than-life is precisely what Clinton is not in this story, but endearingly and precisely life-sized.