From Amazon
Beginning with a brief outline of her childhood, college years, introduction to politics, and her courtship with Bill Clinton, Clinton covers a wide variety of topics: life on the campaign trail, her troubled tenure as leader of the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform, meeting with foreign leaders, and her work on human rights, to name a few. By necessity, she also addresses the various scandals that plagued the administration, from Travelgate to Whitewater to impeachment, though she does not go into great detail about each one; rather, she seems content to simply state her case and move on without trying to settle too many old scores.
Along the way, she offers many apologies, though perhaps not the kind some would expect. She does not shy away from her "vast right-wing conspiracy" comment, for instance, though she does wish that she had expressed herself differently. Regarding the Monica Lewinsky scandal, she maintains that her husband initially lied to her, as he did the rest of the country, and did not come clean until two days prior to his grand jury testimony. Calling his betrayal "the most devastating, shocking and hurtful experience of my life," she explains what the aftermath was like personally and why she has elected to stand by her man. In all, Living History is an informative book that goes a long way toward humanizing one of the most recognizable, and controversial, women of our age. Shawn Carkonen
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
More judicious critics have claimed that the book is merely a political manifesto in preparation for a run at the presidency; that it is evasive; that it is a series of self-justifications. There is truth in the last two charges: but surely it would be naïve to expect otherwise from a politician in mid-career. Hence Clinton skips lightly over her husband's philandering, adds little to the Lewinsky affair, and rebuts criticism on such issues as Whitewater, her failed health care plan, and her embrace of Suha Arafat after Mrs. Arafat's outrageous statement that Israel used poisoned gas on the Palestinians. Clinton also returns tediously to trivial matters, such as criticisms of her cloths, hairstyles, and her imagined "conversations" with Eleanor Roosevelt.
These weaknesses are not only predictable, they are inherent in the genre itself, and students of autobiography have long since stopped deploring omissions, and concentrated instead on strategies to interpret what remains. And, in spite of the team of writers involved in producing this book, personal revelations and illuminating incidents emerge.
One telling incident occurs at a party hosted by Jacqueline Kennedy, when a chorus of voices urges Clinton to jump from a yacht's 40-ft diving board into the water. Never one to refuse challenges, she is reluctant to back off from doing "what I was most afraid to do." Jackie, however, sensing Clinton's trepidation, calls out, "Don't let them talk you into it, Hillary." Thus encouraged, Clinton finally gives herself permission to beat a retreat.
But the main key to Clinton's character is to be found in her mother's early life. Dorothy Howells was born in Chicago in 1919 to a 15-year-old mother and a 17-year-old father; she was eight years old when her parents divorced and abandoned her. She was dispatched to California by train, in charge of her three-year-old sister, and into the unwelcoming care of her paternal grandparents. She left what had become an unbearably miserable home at 14, putting herself through high school by caring for a family's children in return for room and board. After high school, she returned to Chicago, and worked as a secretary until she met and married Hugh Rodham.
Being robbed of her childhood left Dorothy Rodham with a profound sympathy for the dispossessed, especially for children. Early abandonment and vulnerability also gave her a strong instinct for self-protective camouflage. Parental divorce was a source of shame, and she was married to a parsimonious, irascible husband whose right-wing opinions she did not share. In the staunchly Republican Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, she was a closet Democrat who voted for Kennedy. Clinton notes, "I am not the sort of person who routinely pours out her deepest feelings, even to my closest friends. My mother is the same way. We have a tendency to keep our own counsel…." The danger here is that habitual camouflage can easily morph into self-deception.
Dorothy Rodham apparently passed on another trait: Clinton's book is rife with evidence of her unrelieved intensity and earnestness. There is unintended humour in the descriptions of social occasions generally calling for small talk and persiflage. The cumulative impression is of a series gala dinners, gaiety reigning around the table, while Clinton's unfortunate neighbour is having his ears bent by an intense Boswell at his elbow.
During a 1989 dinner at Monticello for state governors and their wives, she seizes the opportunity to inform an incredulous George Bush that the infant mortality rate in the U.S. lags behind that of eighteen other industrialized nations. During a state visit by the Blairs, she discusses NATO expansion, Bosnia, and Iraq with Tony Blair. At Bill's 47th birthday party, seated at dinner beside William Styron, the topic is depression and suicide.
Of course, earnestness even at its deadliest is not a vicious trait, but it often implies self-righteousness, literal-mindedness, and lack of perspective. It accounts for the embarrassingly saccharine and platitudinous It Takes a Village, with its myriad proverbs and inspirational quotations. The present volume is vastly superior to that book, but it contains many false notes. There are nods to family values, pieties about prayer breakfasts and family prayers, empty compliments handed out like bouquets to nice people like Lady Bird Johnson, Aline Chretien, and the Queen. This earnestness is Clinton's least endearing trait, bringing to mind those girls of excessive rectitude and good works who were programmed to become "leaders", i.e. brownie, girl scout, prefect, head girl, Rhodes scholar. It is also disturbingly reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher.
Yet for all the pieties, there is a great deal to admire in Clinton's character. Many episodes provide true testimony to her courage in overcoming the obstacles that still face intelligent and achieving women. One is the account of her graduation from Wellesley in the turbulent 60s. The commencement speaker, Republican senator Edward Brooke disappointed the graduates by giving a speech criticizing anti-war protests. As president of student government, Clinton was chosen as Wellesley's first student speaker. She followed Brooke's talk by addressing crucial issues, and stressing the need for political involvement. Her speech so infuriated the president of Wellesley that when Clinton went for a celebratory swim afterwards (swimming often carries metaphorical weight with her) in an unauthorized area of the campus lake, the president ordered a security guard to confiscate her clothes and glasses; she was forced to reclaim them in humiliation, dripping wet and unable to see.
After Wellesley came law school, where Clinton was one of 27 women in a class of 235. Torn between Harvard and Yale (she was accepted by both) she chose Yale after a Harvard professor, hearing that she was considering Harvard's "close competitor", opined, "Well, first of all, we don't have any close competitors. Secondly, we don't need any more women at Harvard."
Next she became "a lady law professor" and legal aid lawyer in Arkansas, where a judge asked her to leave the courtroom in a rape case, because he couldn't talk about blood and semen "in front of a lady." She was the first woman associate at the Rose Law Firm, taking on child advocacy cases pro bono. Her concern for child welfare, another part of the maternal legacy, long predated her arrival at the White House, and was not the kind of appropriately womanly cause that First Ladies are encouraged to take up.
It is common knowledge that the Clinton presidency inflicted upon her one long series of humiliations, culminating in the Starr inquisition. Of course, she was not the only First Lady with an errant husband problem, but she was the first one to have been so brutally exposed, scrutinized, vilified, and—most cruel of all—ridiculed during the prolonged ordeal. Hillary Clinton's ability to overcome those humiliations, and translate them into assets suggests a formidable strength of character, similar to that of her mother. It also goes a long way to account for the phenomenal success of this book. That success, and its unexpectedness, indicates that the breadth of her appeal has been underestimated, and that she is seen by many people, especially by women, as a heroic figure.
One last note and a very sinister one: she writes of her childhood as a time when kids walked or rode their bikes everywhere, "sometimes trailing the slow-moving town trucks that sprayed a fog of DDT at dusk in the summer months…We just thought it was fun to pedal through the haze, breathing in the sweet and acrid smells…" One can only hope that she survives the toxic effects of those poisonous clouds, as well as she has survived the toxic effects of non-physical poisons that have enveloped her for much of her career.
Joan Givner (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada
Book Description
Hillary Rodham Clinton came of age during a time of tumultuous social and political change in America. Like many women of her generation, she grew up with choices and opportunities unknown to her mother or grandmother. She charted her own course through unexplored terrain -- responding to the changing times and her own internal compass -- and became an emblem for some and a lightning rod for others. Wife, mother, lawyer, advocate and international icon, she has lived through America's great political wars, from Watergate to Whitewater.
The only First Lady to play a major role in shaping domestic legislation, Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled tirelessly around the country to champion health care, expand economic and educational opportunity and promote the needs of children and families, and she crisscrossed the globe on behalf of women's rights, human rights and democracy. She redefined the position of First Lady and helped save the presidency from an unconstitutional, politically motivated impeachment. Intimate, powerful and inspiring, "Living History" captures the essence of one of the most remarkable women of our time and the challenging process by which she came to define herself and find her own voice -- as a woman and as a formidable figure in American politics.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Bill Clinton was hard to miss in the autumn of 1970. He arrived at Yale Law School looking more like a Viking than a Rhodes Scholar returning from two years at Oxford. He was tall and handsome somewhere beneath that reddish brown beard and curly mane of hair. He also had a vitality that seemed to shoot out of his pores. When I first saw him in the law school's student lounge, he was holding forth before a rapt audience of fellow students. As I walked by, I heard him say: "...and not only that, we grow the biggest watermelons in the world!" I asked a friend, "Who is that?"
"Oh, that's Bill Clinton," he said. "He's from Arkansas, and that's all he ever talks about."
We would run into each other around campus, but we never actually met until one night at the Yale law library the following spring. I was studying in the library, and Bill was standing out in the hall talking to another student, Jeff Gleckel, who was trying to persuade Bill to write for the Yale Law Journal. I noticed that he kept looking over at me. He had been doing a lot of that. So I stood up from the desk, walked over to him and said, "If you're going to keep looking at me, and I'm going to keep looking back, we might as well be introduced. I'm Hillary Rodham." That was it. The way Bill tells the story, he couldn't remember his own name.
We didn't talk to each other again until the last day of classes in the spring of 1971. We happened to walk out of Professor Thomas Emerson's Political and Civil Rights course at the same time. Bill asked me where I was going. I was on the way to the registrar's office to sign up for the next semester's classes. He told me he was heading there too. As we walked, he complimented my long flower-patterned skirt. When I told him that my mother had made it, he asked about my family and where I had grown up. We waited in line until we got to the registrar. She looked up and said, "Bill, what are you doing here? You've already registered." I laughed when he confessed that he just wanted to spend time with me, and we went for a long walk that turned into our first date.
We both had wanted to see a Mark Rothko exhibit at the Yale Art Gallery but, because of a labor dispute, some of the university's buildings, including the museum, were closed. As Bill and I walked by, he decided he could get us in if we offered to pick up the litter that had accumulated in the gallery's courtyard. Watching him talk our way in was the first time I saw his persuasiveness in action. We had the entire museum to ourselves. We wandered through the galleries talking about Rothko and twentieth-century art. I admit to being surprised at his interest in and knowledge of subjects that seemed, at first, unusual for a Viking from Arkansas. We ended up in the museum's courtyard, where I sat in the large lap of Henry Moore's sculpture Draped Seated Woman while we talked until dark. I invited Bill to the party my roommate, Kwan Kwan Tan, and I were throwing in our dorm room that night to celebrate the end of classes. Kwan Kwan, an ethnic Chinese who had come from Burma to Yale to pursue graduate legal studies, was a delightful living companion and a graceful performer of Burmese dance. She and her husband, Bill Wang, another student, remain friends.
Bill came to our party but hardly said a word. Since I didn't know him that well, I thought he must be shy, perhaps not very socially adept or just uncomfortable. I didn't have much hope for us as a couple. Besides, I had a boyfriend at the time, and we had weekend plans out of town. When I came back to Yale late Sunday, Bill called and heard me coughing and hacking from the bad cold I had picked up.
"You sound terrible," he said. About thirty minutes later, he knocked on my door, bearing chicken soup and orange juice. He came in, and he started talking. He could converse about anything -- from African politics to country and western music. I asked him why he had been so quiet at my party.
"Because I was interested in learning more about you and your friends," he replied.
I was starting to realize that this young man from Arkansas was much more complex than first impressions might suggest. To this day, he can astonish me with the connections he weaves between ideas and words and how he makes it all sound like music. I still love the way he thinks and the way he looks. One of the first things I noticed about Bill was the shape of his hands. His wrists are narrow and his fingers tapered and deft, like those of a pianist or a surgeon. When we first met as students, I loved watching him turn the pages of a book. Now his hands are showing signs of age after thousands of handshakes and golf swings and miles of signatures. They are, like their owner, weathered but still expressive, attractive and resilient.
Soon after Bill came to my rescue with chicken soup and orange juice, we became inseparable. In between cramming for finals and finishing up my first year of concentration on children, we spent long hours driving around in his 1970 burnt-orange Opel station wagon -- truly one of the ugliest cars ever manufactured -- or hanging out at the beach house on Long Island Sound near Milford, Connecticut, where he lived with his roommates, Doug Eakeley, Don Pogue and Bill Coleman. At a party there one night, Bill and I ended up in the kitchen talking about what each of us wanted to do after graduation. I still didn't know where I would live and what I would do because my interests in child advocacy and civil rights didn't dictate a particular path. Bill was absolutely certain: He would go home to Arkansas and run for public office. A lot of my classmates said they intended to pursue public service, but Bill was the only one who you knew for certain would actually do it.
I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland, California, and he announced that he would like to go to California with me. I was astonished. I knew he had signed on to work in Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign and that the campaign manager, Gary Hart, had asked Bill to organize the South for McGovern. The prospect of driving from one Southern state to another convincing Democrats both to support McGovern and to oppose Nixon's policy in Vietnam excited him.
Although Bill had worked in Arkansas on campaigns for Senator J. William Fulbright and others, and in Connecticut for Joe Duffey and Joe Lieberman, he'd never had the chance to be in on the ground floor of a presidential campaign.
I tried to let the news sink in. I was thrilled.
"Why," I asked, "do you want to give up the opportunity to do something you love to follow me to California?"
"For someone I love, that's why," he said.
He had decided, he told me, that we were destined for each other, and he didn't want to let me go just after he'd found me.
Bill and I shared a small apartment near a big park not far from the University of California at Berkeley campus where the Free Speech Movement started in 1964. I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case. Meanwhile, Bill explored Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco. On weekends, he took me to the places he had scouted, like a restaurant in North Beach or a vintage clothing store on Telegraph Avenue. I tried teaching him tennis, and we both experimented with cooking. I baked him a peach pie, something I associated with Arkansas, although I had yet to visit the state, and together we produced a palatable chicken curry for any and all occasions we hosted. Bill spent most of his time reading and then sharing with me his thoughts about books like To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson. During our long walks, he often broke into song, frequently crooning one of his Elvis Presley favorites.
People have said that I knew Bill would be President one day and went around telling anyone who would listen. I don't remember thinking that until years later, but I had one strange encounter at a small restaurant in Berkeley. I was supposed to meet Bill, but I was held up at work and arrived late. There was no sign of him, and I asked the waiter if he had seen a man of his description. A customer sitting nearby spoke up, saying, "He was here for a long time reading, and I started talking to him about books. I don't know his name, but he's going to be President someday." "Yeah, right," I said, "but do you know where he went?"
At the end of the summer, we returned to New Haven and rented the ground floor of 21 Edgewood Avenue for seventy-five dollars a month. That bought us a living room with a fireplace, one small bedroom, a third room that served as both study and dining area, a tiny bathroom and a primitive kitchen. The floors were so uneven that plates would slide off the dining table if we didn't keep little wooden blocks under the table legs to level them. The wind howled through cracks in the walls that we stuffed with newspapers. But despite it all, I loved our first house. We shopped for furniture at the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores and were quite proud of our student decor.
Our apartment was a block away from the Elm Street Diner, which we frequented because it was open all night. The local Y down the street had a yoga class that I joined, and Bill agreed to take with me -- as long as I didn't tell anybody else. He also came along to the Cathedral of Sweat, Yale's gothic sports center, to run mindlessly around the mezzanine track. Once he started running, he kept going. I didn't.
We ate often at Basel's, a favorite Greek restaurant, and loved going to the movies at the Lincoln, a small theater set back on a residential street. One evening after a blizzard finally stopped, we decided to go to the movies. The roads were not yet cleared, so we walked there and back through the foot-high snowdrifts, feeling very much alive and in love.
We both had to work to pay our way through law school, on top of the student loans we had taken out. But we still found time for politics. Bill decided to open a... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
