Inside the Clinton White House: An Oral History

ISBN-13: 9780190605469 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 464 str.

Russell L. Riley

Opis

President Bill Clinton led one of the most influential and consequential White House tenures in recent memory. However, because of the office's traditional climate of confidentiality, many details of his behind-the-scenes activities have remained absent from the written record. How did the administration manage the horrific conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans that came to a head shortly after the President took the oath? What motivated the President to place First Lady Hillary Clinton at the helm of the ill-fated Health Security Act of 1993? And how did the President's closest confidantes and aides respond to the outbreak of the devastating scandal that nearly ended his presidency?

Inside the Clinton White House offers an intimate perspective on these questions and many more, granting readers unprecedented access to the sensitive Oval Office banter that changed the course of history. Bringing together material from 400 hours of candid conversations with over sixty individuals, respected oral historian Russell L. Riley weaves this illuminating testimony with important contextual information to form an irresistible narrative, taking the reader from Clinton's first potential White House bid in 1988 to the final days of his remarkable and controversial career. Extended sections of the book are devoted to important domestic and foreign policy campaigns, the complicated politics of the President's two terms and impeachment, and portraits of important personalities in the administration, including Vice President Al Gore and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. These forthright and often surprising accounts add a layer of nuance to an iconic figure in America's recent history, as told in the words of the people who knew him best.

Recenzje

[A] masterful history of the White House told from the perspective of those who were there. Russell Riley has collated countless hours of elite interviewing into a vivid and eminently useful narrative history of the presidency of Bill Clinton... The frankness of the text combined with Riley's gift for narrative and structure make this book a vital contribution to the literature not only on William Jefferson Clinton, but also on presidential politics and oral history, as well

O autorze

Russell L. Riley is Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, where he has conducted nearly 300 oral history interviews with senior officials from every administration since Jimmy Carter's. He is the author and editor of several books on the American presidency, including The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-Keeping from 1831 to 1965 and The President's Words: Speeches and Speechwriting in the Modern White House.