Autobiography on bill clinton

Rate this book. Bill Clinton. 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 autobiography on bill clinton 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. 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. 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. Loading interface About the author. Bill Clinton books 1, followers. Economic expansion and the first balanced federal budget in three decades marked presidency of William Jefferson Clintonknown as Billwho served forty-second in the United States from to ; the House of Representatives in impeached him on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, but the Senate acquitted him on both counts.

People know him the first baby-boomer president at the end of the Cold War. He is the husband of Hillary Rodham Clintonthe junior senator from New York and a Democratic candidate in the election of in the United States. People described Clinton as a New Democrat and knew him largely for the Third Way philosophy of governance that came to epitomize his two terms as president.

Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget and a reported federal surplus. His presidency was also quickly challenged. On the heels of a failed attempt at health care reform with a Democratic Congress, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

In his second term he was impeached by the U. House for perjury and obstruction of justice, but was subsequently acquitted by the United States Senate and completed his term. New York Times December 21, Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Inhe released a personal autobiography, My Life.

The president comments on the disastrous Democratic Convention that left the party weakened and crushed in that year's election. He often autobiographies on bill clinton what goes on to his own life and career. We were in trouble to start with, and it was all over when Mondale said he would purpose a hefty tax increase to reduce the budget deficit.

It was a remarkable act of candor, but he might as well have purposed a federal car-tag fee. As president, he was able to focus on doing his job despite the immense assault on him and the very institution of the presidency. As one can imagine he tires to gloss over his martial indiscretions. However, one cannot fail to be impressed with the way he tries to keep working for the American people both on the domestic and foreign fronts despite being assailed from all sides.

However his political enemies keep trying to bring him down, not simple by the legitimate methods of congressional gridlock and elections but by tearing down some of the basic institutions of government in order to get him. It did not matter how hypocritical their methods were, they were going full stop. Finally, he dined under oath that his office had tried to get Monica Lewinsky to wear a wire to record our conversations with Vernon Jordan, me, or other people.

When confronted with the FBI form proving that he had, he was evasive. The fact that Starr admitted violating the law on grand jury secrecy and had given false testimony under oath didn't slow him or the committee down a bit. They thought different rules applied to the home team. Eisenhower left office in His writing, although a long book over nine hundred pagesfollows smoothly and is an easy read.

Anyone interested in modern American politics would enjoy this book. Read this years ago and thought it was mostly name-dropping by a professional narcissist. Pretty much lived up to my predictions The first autobiography I've included in my walk through the presidents, I prepared myself to read a skewed and incomplete story of President It was certainly from a favorable autobiography on bill clinton, but I did not feel misled in any way.

Clinton tells his story as he sees it, and I enjoyed the view. The book was surprisingly more thorough than I expected, including more detail from Clinton's youth than I've read in anyone else's biography. I'm not sure how reliable all the details are, but nevertheless it's an impressive amount of recall and inclusion in the story.

The only way the coverage may have been lacking is toward the end, during Clinton's last few years in office, where the book moved at a faster pace than it did during his pre-presidential life and his first term in the White House. I actually learned something new about the Lewinsky affair maybe I had not wanted to know at the timewithout being presented with any messy details.

I came away wanting to read Monica's book. After having read through the extramarital relations and near-misses of many of the presidents prior to Clinton, I have a new appreciation for the cruelty and unfairness of what he went through as president, after an investigation of an obscure land deal in Arkansas ended in punishment for a forbidden encounter in the Oval Office.

Name-dropping was constant throughout, but not difficult to process, only a little tiring. In the acknowledgments, Clinton says his editor cut out a lot of names, and I can't imagine how much more taxing this would have been had those cuts not been made. Clinton has an outstanding memory and a desire to please everyone, but those traits can work against him at times.

My Life was a terrific revisit of what I'll admit has been my favorite president in my lifetime. I wish it had covered a little more of his post-presidency, as it was published in and left room for other topics. Overall, I loved it, and will read it again someday when I have five reading weeks free. Scott Holstad. Author 22 books 77 followers.

At nearly 1, pages, this book is a monster to read, but boy, am I glad I did! First of all, I love Bill Clinton, I've got to be honest. He was, is, and will always be my favorite president. That said, I was curious how he would describe his life and is on goings in the White House and before. He starts with his childhood and writes an exhaustive account of his life up until Bush takes over for him.

He spends a great deal of time early on discussing religion and his spirituality, both of which seem extremely important to him. He's Methodist. He also spends a lot of time on the Vietnam War and his not going over to fight. He explains that he really struggled with that decision, and although I already knew this, he acknowledges that he joined the ROTC to fulfill his military duty before backing out to finish out his Fulbright scholarship at Oxford.

He was plainly torn. His description of meeting and courting Hillary is truly interesting, and it seems clear to me that he really does love her very much, as well as Chelsea. Both women are mentioned extensively in this book. Clinton could have taken a lot of pot shots at the jerks who consistently attacked him and tried to ruin his life ever since he was elected governor of Arkansas, but he's a bit of a gentleman and goes easy on most.

He does display his scorn for Kenneth Starr, who in my opinion, is one of the most evil men of the twentieth century and who should burn in hell for the suffering he caused countless people. What a vindictive asshole! Clinton also does have some hard words to say about the hard Right, with whom he was constantly at war for the last six years of his presidency.

It's amazing to me still how much he was able to accomplish with all of the attacks on his character and presidency. If you're after juicy gossip, though, you won't find it here. He denies any role with Flowers or Paula Jones and while admitting to the Monica disaster, he limits its inclusion in the book while apologizing to all for his poor decisions.

There are a couple of passages that really stood out for me. The first one reads, "Although I would always regret what I had done wrong, I will go to my grave being proud of what I had fought for in the impeachment battle, my last great showdown with the forces I had opposed all of my life -- those who defended the old order of racial discrimination and segregation in the South and played on the insecurities and fears of the white working class in which I grew up; who had opposed the women's movement, the environmental movement, the gay-rights movement, and other efforts to expand our national community as assaults on the natural order; who believed government should be run for the benefit of powerful entrenched interests and favored tax cuts for the wealthy over health care and better education for children.

Fast forward to and it doesn't sound like much as changed, does it? The Republicans are still trying to oppose the very same things and advance the very same tired agenda. Later, he writes about some of the things I loved about his presidency in writing about his State of the Union Address. We had more then twenty million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate and smallest welfare rolls in thirty years, the lowest crime rate in twenty-five years, the lowest poverty rate in twenty years, the smallest federal workforce in forty years, the first back-to-back surpluses in forty-two years, seven years of declining teen pregnancies and a 30 percent increase in adoptions, andyoung people who had served in AmericCorps.

Within a month we would have the longest economic expansion in American history, and by the end of the year we would have three consecutive surpluses for the first time in more than fifty years. And why did people hate such a wonderful president? Of course, the real tragedy is Bush came in and decimated everything, rolling back social expansions, international friendships, and financial gains and starting a three TRILLION dollar war in Iraq I'm reading on a book on this right now we couldn't pay for and had to borrow to finance, thus practically bankrupting the country for years to come.

Bush needs to be tried for crimes against humanity for what he did to hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq in his deceitful and failed attempts to establish democracy and control oil. If only Clinton were back in office. Obama is better than having the far right Republicans in office, certainly, but he's no Clinton. Perhaps Hillary will save us in One can only hope.

This was a fascinating book to read and if you're not too frightened by its size and want to learn about American politics in the s, it's a great book to read. I strongly recommend it. John Eliade. Three hundred and fifty-five pages in. I'm done. I think I got up to I'm done with this. I've read a lot of books much shorter than this that came to a much more satisfying conclusion, with far fewer characters, conflicts, and more likeable protagonists.

I don't know if it's counter to GoodReads etiquette, but hell, I read this, and didn't even reach his presidency. There's a character in that book named "Shitmouth. This guy shows up briefly as a blacksmith who tells Jaime Lannister all the crazy things that have been happening in his part of the world since Jaime was there last. Shitmouth earned his name because he was incredibly foul mouthed.

He shows up for less than a few pages if that and yet I know so much about him. Another character, I'm pretty sure never even appears in the books: Baelor Butthole. That's not his real name, but I think Jaime calls him that because he's a stuck-up religious zealot. Baelor loved the former Targaryen Queen, Rhaenys. But since he was too low-born and the Targaryens had the habit of marrying brother and sister together, he was resigned to bachelorhood for the rest of his life.

These are fictional people. And yet, I know so SO much more about them than anyone in Clinton's fucking book. Clinton has a habit of introducing random people who he claims were his friends who helped him politically or personally. He seems to introduce them pretty much only when they die and he has to attend their funerals. No one mentions a funeral in any other kind of book unless something profound or life-changing happens there.

Bill just seems to have felt sentimental. I get this weird feeling of sitting at my grandparents' dinner table as they open up a box of mostly chronologically ordered photos from before their birth to the present day and going over the details of each photo, and describing each person's life in vague and sweeping detail. Like the page where Bill decides to describe a college football game in excruciating detail.

Nothing really important happens in that game.

Autobiography on bill clinton

Clinton didn't play in it. I have the sneaking suspicion that Clinton didn't edit this even a little bit. If only he had an editor to step in and say, "Look, Bill, I know this guy was important to you, but Oh, and this page about the football game I mean, we don't need it. Like at all. Because I can't fathom how Clinton: A. Remembered all of this, or B.

Decided it was worth writing down at the time. Which leads me to believe that he has some kind of bizarre memory and when you combine the fallibility of human memories with the aversion of politicians from facts, logic, and truth, well My coworker saw me reading the book and said several times"Does it say if he slept with Monica Lewinsky?

So I never really came close to the pages that concern his affair. Just looking at the autobiography on bill clinton, and how from Page 2 he starts rambling how the mentally challenged girl he knew as a child later inspired him to work on some future Welfare Bill to help the disabled, I really get the sense that Clinton wanted to try and adjust his image for posterity as not just the President who got impeached for sleeping with the intern.

And while, obviously, a lot happened in the eight years that he was President, no amount of Alabama metaphors, winding career paths in the Democratic Party, or random friends that helped him with such and such, are going to change the fact that he is The President Who Slept with an Intern. Sorry, Mr. Next time I'm interested in his tenure, I'm just going to look up the Wikipedia page.

At nearly pages, this book is not for the faint of heart. The beginning is slow, as it seems that Clinton is mentioning every single person that passed through his childhood and adolescence. The book finally gets interesting when Clinton enters politics. As someone who lived through the Clinton years, I enjoyed reading Clinton's perspective on events during that time.

His views on the Middle East talks were particularly interesting and enlightening. His insider's view of politics during that time is also very fascinating, especially as we head into an election year. I would highly recommend this book to all - it is a fascinating book about a fascinating man. I was already a Bill Clinton fan, but his memoir just solidified my reasons.

He is such an intelligent, self-made man. His detractors would do well to read this, too. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Dewey Decimal. Summary and themes [ edit ]. Writing process [ edit ]. Reaction [ edit ]. Reception [ edit ]. Editions [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. The New York Times. 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.

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.