Clinton Books

I understand there is no intelligence requirement prior to voting, but at the very least this book should be mandatory reading before the upcoming election.
People should know that James Stewart was actually invited by Hillary Clinton to write this expose. When the truth became far less flattering than she would have scripted she attempted to control the author's work.
Mr. Stewart refused any intervention and went on to publish the book with out the blessing of the wicked witch of the east.
The attention to detail is flawless. The accuracy is frightening and the truth is impossible to ignore.

Although I thought this book was an easy read into the whole Clinton-Hillary Whitewater debacle (was it really that simple?)....it seems there were some inconsistancies concerning what was presented on the Vince Foster items( as can be easily researched). This, in turn, makes me wonder about the accuracy about the rest of the story of Whitewater and the innocence of the Clintons.
Sometimes one just can't get over the feeling that certain publications are out there to "tidy things up".

The American people were forewarned long ago that this was no ordinary (if there could be such a description) political couple. James B. Stewart delineates the machinations that typified the Clinton story throughout Bill Clinton's Arkansas governorship. Now a lot of this is intertwined with the peculiarities of Arkansas society, where it seems everybody knows everybody else (no offense to many decent Arkansans; much of my family hails from there). And this may be why Kenneth Starr was not able to find solid evidence of wrongdoing, although he obtained several convictions of Clinton associates. Yet to many of us Whitewater was a real-estate deal a sitting state Attorney General and later Governor would not touch with a ten- or even a twenty-foot pole. And that goes double for Castle Grande, cattle futures and Madison Guaranty Trust. Under other circumstances an office holder would have put his or her assets into a blind trust. This intrigue has continued into Bill Clinton's Presidency and beyond (White House coffees, stayovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, selling of sensitive technological information for campaign contributions, selling of pardons, the sneaking of antiques out of the White House, the financing of the Chappaqua house purchase and Hillary Rodham Clinton's registry with several department stores in the manner of an expectant bride--note that for her actual wedding in 1975, she bought her wedding dress off the rack at Dillard's the day before). And those are just the FINANCIAL intrigues!

Although Stewart is a reputable author, and in fact a Pulitzer Prize winner, this book is a remarkable farrago of fact and fantasy. It is written as a "docudrama," featuring numerous "recreated" dialogues between characters, and indeed even internal narratives and the innermost thoughts of people whom Stewart never interviewed, and in some cases never even met. It's impossible to tell what is factual, what is embellished from others' memories, and what is merely invention by Stewart himself.

It's also notable that everyone who agreed to serve as a source for Stewart is treated far better than those who refused -- and that includes both Clintons and many of their closest friends and associates.

The book is filled with easily correctable inaccuracies, such as when the book gives us a scene showing Hillary Clinton receiving the news of Vince Foster's death while at "the Rodham home in Little Rock, where Hillary was visiting her mother and father, who was ill." Hillary's father Hugh Rodham had died three months earlier. Another scene shows a young Bill Clinton visiting "kingmaker" Jim McDougal in 1975, hoping for McDougal's help in running for Pryor's Senate seat. Not bad, except Pryor was Governor, not Senator, in 1975, and McDougal was hardly powerful enough to be any sort of "kingmaker." White supremacist Jim Johnson, a virulent Clinton-hater who accused Clinton of being, among other things, a "n*gger-lover," and served as one of Stewart's sources, is portrayed as a genial "Democrat-turned-Republican" whose racial hatreds are never mentioned. Other errors abound. Judge David Hale, a businessman and convicted embezzler, is said to have been appointed to the bench by Clinton, when in fact it was Frank White, Clinton's predecessor, who appointed Hale. Hale is also portrayed as breaking the law by loaning money to his "Democrat friends," when in fact Hale made far more loans to Republicans than Democrats, and he broke the law by embezzling over $2 million from the federal government.

Stewart's primary source is Jim McDougal. The real estate wheeler-dealer, who suffered from manic-depression and was convicted of multiple felonies and died in prison, is a notorious liar who lied under oath to more than one court and federal investigator. Stewart also seems completely unaware of the Pillsbury Report, the RTC investigation that completely exonerated the Clintons of any wrongdoing in 1995, and instead relied completely on the then-ongoing Kenneth Starr investigation, which was proven to be full of sensationalistic lies and never returned a single indictment against either of the Clintons for anything. He ignores completely the well-documented body of evidence proving that McDougal committed a raft of financial crimes, and tries to pin the criminal wrongdoings on the Clintons without citing any evidence.

Perhaps worst of all, he tries to link the Vince Foster suicide to Whitewater. This was disproven time and time again -- by the Park Police investigation, by the FBI, by Robert Fiske's independent counsel, and by Kenneth Starr himself.

Stewart made at least one more egregrious error. Shortly after the book's publication he went on "Nightline" to accuse Hillary Clinton of submitting a false loan report relating to Whitewater. He says she submitted the loan report without filling out key sections. Yet in his own appendix, Stewart reprints the loan document, which, if you bother to turn it over and read the back, shows that Hillary did indeed complete the loan document properly. Stewart never bothered to flip the document over and read the back.

The book is worthless, yet another in the seemingly endless parade of baseless, easily disprovable Clinton smears that filled the bookshelves at the time. I see that Amazon currently has used copies for sale for 1 cent. Save your money; this book isn't worth that bent piece of copper.

I read this book in 1997 when the paperback came out. I approached this book as a moderate GOP much in love with Reagan and Bush 41. I never voted for Clinton, but was intrigued by him for several reasons:

1) He was executing wonderfully in '97 (see Morris' "Behind the Oval Office" for this period), even though the GOP-dominated house had elevated partisan politics to the art form it is today.
2) The Press was crucifying him over Whitewater and I did not understand why, it all seemed so trivial.

My conclusions:
There is a case to be that Hillary Clinton may have evaded taxes and obstructed justice - while criminal and deserving of law enforcement investigation, no reason for an investigation against the President instigated by the DoJ.

Stewart confirms that the investigation of Whitewater was pure politics of personal destruction. Bill Clinton did nothing wrong, certainly nothing that demanded any sort of investigation and obstructed his ability to preside over our nation.

There were trivial matters that make President Clinton less than perfect, but you can find dirt on any ambituous person. The question is, did his actions have a negative impact on our country? This book presents no evidence of that, the only negativity emanating out of this was the ammunition it provided to the GOP and the media to divert our attention from matters of State.

One somewhat comic note was the number of idiots that were part of the Clinton circle. While Clinton was a master at bringing together extremely bright and powerful moderates and attempting to pull the Dems out of the socialistic FDR era, the people he associated with more regularly are a hoot!

This long overdue ProShow guide was a big disapointment. The author has a bad habit of interupting the lessons by putting the glossary in the middle of the lesson(ex pg 20-23). Being used to the Adobe Elements books and the intuitive way the lessons are written, this book is very difficult to follow as there is no coherant lesson plan. There is also a problem in opening some of the lesson materials from the supplied CD. Lastly, the book lumps ProShow Gold $69.95) with the more expensive ProShow Producer ($249.95) and really pushes Producer. I would not recommend this book as a guide to ProShow Gold. The author should take a lesson from the Adobe Photoshop Elements books.

I have been using Proshow Producer for sometime, and was prodding Photodex to write a book, I have to say that I think what happened with this book is in the quality control dept. Its like there was none, and it is very evident with spelling errors, poor illustrations, unfinished illustrations, and words that only an experienced user in ProShow Producer would recognize. I do applaud James Karney for writing it, maybe on the next edition all of the errors will be straightened out. The Program ProShow Gold, and Producer remain an outstanding tool for video slide shows

We are always looking for new tricks and techniques for our amature photo presentations. This book is very helpful.

While being a good guide through a terrific program, it caters to the top of the line Producer version. It's very useful for the Gold version but in many instances the distinctions and capabilities of Gold are lost in the Producer edition.
Excellent!

The Official Photodex Guide to ProShow has a lot of information. A lot of it I didn't know, so I learned a lot from it.

The book has some errors and omissions that are detailed on the authors website and there is a promise that these errors will be corrected in the second printing.

Excellant read - verifies much of what many with half a skull already knew or suspected - all the more reason to "Let Lying Dogs Sleep!!!"

Oh, Liberals don't lie? Only Republicans lie? Put your hippie pot smoking BS out the window. Liberals lie too. LBJ lied to the American people about Vietnam and he was a dumocrat, ooops democrat, I keep getting those two mixed up.

Candice E. Jackson is a lawyer who worked for Judicial Watch, an organization whose founding principles appear to include drowning the the court system with a blizzard of lawsuits against the Clintons.

While purportedly written about a group of women who allege atrocious treatment by Bill Clinton, this screed by a fringe journalist from a fringe publisher instead focuses on an indictment of liberalism.

The "facts" for the accusations of felonies against the 42nd president stem from the chiefly uncorroborated accounts of the several women. How could anyone so brutally raped with a mangled lip from a bite as Juanita Brodderick claims not have taken photographs and had a physician collect semen samples? Certainly the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Office in a Republican administration would have listened to her and pursued a criminal investigation if state authorities would not have.

These women could have secured legal representation, even if funded by arch conservatives as was Paul Jones' counsel, to pursue civil damages.

The author's extreme right-wing credentials are clearly demonstrated by her education and experience. If these terrible allegations were true, they would be more powerfully presented by a mainstream journalist.

What's lower than an Amazon rating of one star? One can't give it here.

Listen to an exclusive interview with Candice E. Jackson Live by She Unlimited Magazine http://www.sheunlimited.com

Candice E. Jackson Sets forth our mission and vison. This interview will shed some light on the books mission and points that author this book.

It was an honor!!!

This is the kind of book that has me shaking my head in disbelief. Is she for real? Or is she just saying what she knows her liberal friends expect her to say in order to keep her liberal credentials up to date? Nancy Soderberg is a nice liberal girl who studied international relations at Georgetown University about 20 years ago under then Professor Madelaine Albright and has been sort of a protégé of Mrs. Albright ever since. Indeed, Mrs. Albright is one of the people quoted on the dust jacket helping to sell the book. President Bill Clinton gives a VERY meager three-page introduction, which is intended, apparently, to give her added legitimacy. The first half of the book describes the events of the Clinton years. Of course, she puts the best possible spin on the Clinton Administration's handling of events. The second half is mostly Bush bashing. She worked for six years during the late 1980s and early 1990s as a Congressional staffer for Senator Ted Kennedy. In 1984 she worked on the unsuccessful Mondale campaign. In 1988 she worked on the unsuccessful Dukakis campaign. Then in 1992 she got lucky when her candidate Bill Clinton won the presidency. As a reward for her contribution as an advisor to his campaign Nancy was appointed as the third ranking member of Clinton's NSC staff. The fact that Clinton would appoint someone with such meager government experience to such a high post suggests to me that either he didn't take it too seriously, or the Democrats have a VERY weak bench in foreign policy/national security, or both. Indeed, she later describes how at the end of the Clinton years she served as US delegate to the UN Security Council and all of the delegates from other countries were men who were about twenty years her senior. No matter, she assures us, since she had the prestige of the US behind her, but somehow I can't escape the impression that we were under represented, that she was like a sparrow among falcons. Nevertheless, she does describe in considerable detail most of the foreign policy events of the last decade or so. She currently works for an international non-profit group based in Brussels, (the capital of course, of the proposed European Union if their constitution ever gets ratified) in a job that appears to be primarily designed to spare her the necessity of having to seek employment in the real economy like the rest of us while she waits very impatiently for another Democratic Administration to take office and give her another big government job. The Clinton Administration failed to produce a foreign policy giant like Zbiginew Brezinski, but they did have Warren Christopher, affectionately called Chris, Anthony Lake, Sandy Berger, Les Aspin, William Perry, Republican William Cohen, George Tenet, Louis Freeh, Wesley Clark, Richard Holbrooke, Madelaine Albright, who emerges as by far the most manly of the bunch, including Clinton, and, of course, the great anti terrorism expert Mr. Richard Clarke, last seen working as a consultant for Ted Koppel at ABC News after selling his own Bush bashing book on 60 Minutes. All of whom are described in some detail as she recounts her personal experiences. Colin Powell also served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the first Clinton year. Although she is very careful to not say anything critical of General Powell she can scarcely contain the glee she felt when he left the Clinton Administration since he largely tended to block their creative uses of military forces. With regard to the infamous Blackhawk Down incident in which the bodies of dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, Nancy claims that, INCREDIBLY, President Bill Clinton and his top advisors were unaware that the US policy had changed from protecting the UN food distribution centers to apprehension of the warlord Mohammed Aideed. If true, what does this say about the competence of the Clinton team? With regard to Haiti, she completely ignores the fact that the motive for returning exiled President Aristide to Haiti with American bayonets was the tremendous political pressure brought upon Clinton by African American opinion leaders, a significant part of Clinton's political base. How's that for an unselfish motive? As she describes, pretty much all of the Republican leaders, and even members of Clinton's own Administration, and especially the CIA, had a low opinion of Mr. Aristide and were EXTREMELY dubious about the wisdom of using US military power to return him to power. Of course Mr. Aristide eventually exited the country once again under less than dignified circumstances. She laments that Mr. Aristide failed to make good on his promises to enact democratic and humanitarian reforms and instead, tried to set himself up as yet another strong man. It never occurs to her that perhaps the critics were right all along and that Mr. Aristide is simply a turkey, period. With regard to Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Serbian government of Slobodon Milosovic, probably the less said the better. UN peacekeepers were sometimes taken hostage and used as human shields. The UN and even NATO were openly threatened with violence against their soldiers, etc, and sometimes succumbed to intimidation. The European powers, the same people who like to brag about how they will eclipse the US in power and influence once they just get France and Holland to vote again and vote yes this time to accept their proposed European constitution, cried for President Clinton to pull their chestnuts out of the fire by leading a military effort to punish Serbia for ethnic cleansing, etc, and establish stability and order in the Balkans. US and NATO soldiers still stand guard against ethnic cleansing and very little has changed to give any confidence that if the soldiers were to leave they just wouldn't go back to killing each other once again. No matter, Nancy talks as if she considers this a real achievement. Of course, the centerpiece of the Clinton foreign policy was always the Middle East peace process. Nancy describes how the Clinton Administration sought to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and also sought to bring peace to Northern Ireland by reaching out to Yassir Arafat of the PLO and to Gerry Adams of the IRA and encouraging them to become peacemakers. She has developed a whole rationalization for why the peace efforts ultimately failed. But for this unfortunate event or that, we were so close, etc. She still doesn't get it that these two individuals were simply front men for ruthless terrorist groups who played the Clinton Administration for all they were worth. They were all smiles as they strung Clinton along for seven or eight years with promises that they never fulfilled. They received international recognition, legitimacy, invitations to the White House, cash, and in the case of Mr. Arafat, I believe even a Nobel Peace Prize, only to stiff us in the end. The way Ms. Soderberg tells it, the Clinton Administration boldly charted a moderate course in foreign policy, building international consensus on important global issues, working with allies to achieve common goals, pursuing unselfish policies for the common good, well, you get the idea. Then, just as they were making great progress toward solving the problems of mankind George W. Bush came along and, after becoming president, changed all that to instead pursue a selfish policy based upon national interest. For example, she is outraged that Bush announced publicly that the US would not abide by the provisions of the Kyoto treaty concerning global warming. Recognizing the obvious fact that no US president could possibly abide by the treaty she advises instead that Bush should have said nothing and simply ignored the treaty. Say what? That may be how they do things in Canada or Europe but Americans are not so good at hypocrisy, at least not the kind of Americans who voted for Bush. She blames the Bush Administration for letting North Korea get further along on their nuclear bomb program, while conveniently ignoring that Clinton paid them to be good only to let them take the money and then work on the bomb anyway. INCREDIBLY, she favors paying them again. Oh, well, I guess she feels that it worked so well when Clinton did just that. It certainly worked out well for the outlaw government of North Korea. It makes me wonder if Nancy Soderberg REALLY understands what appeasement is. Not just the textbook definition, but how it works in practice, the psychology of the victim, the rationalizations involved to convince oneself that the aggressive bully really has valid points in his favor and that it isn't really appeasement at all, that it is better to compromise, to do what he wants to redress his grievances, that it is better for everybody, etc. in the hopes of a peaceful settlement, because war is really scary. In other words, exactly the kind of arguments that she herself puts forward. By the way, I noticed that she makes no mention whatsoever of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos by the Chinese communists during Clinton's watch. I guess that this wasn't a significant enough development to merit inclusion in the book. Of course, Ms. Soderberg is dead set against Bush's decision to use force to remove Saddam Hussein and his odious regime from power. If she had her way, Saddam would still be in power, Uday and Qusay and Chemical Ali would still be murdering and torturing Iraqis, billions of dollars would continue to be looted from the UN managed Oil for Food program, Baghdad Bob would continue to give Iraqis their news, and so on. She doesn't think that it is worth the 1600 Americans killed so far, as well as perhaps 100,000 Iraqis and others to put an end to such tyranny and give the 25 million people of Iraq a fighting chance to experience freedom and prosperity, just as a decade ago the Clinton Administration, and the rest of the world, didn't think that it was worth the sacrifices required to stop the genocide in Rwanda where at least hundreds of thousands perished violently. They would rather make Hollywood movies to show how awful things can be and build holocaust memorials to commemorate the victims rather than shed any blood to actually stop a REAL genocide. At least 300,000 victims are attributed to Saddam Hussein not counting the victims of two major wars that he started. That beats Bosnia and Kosovo by a long shot. Ms. Soderberg refers derisively to those favoring the removal of Saddam Hussein from power by force as hegemons, a Greek word, first used, I believe, in reference to Philip II of Macedonia, the ruler who, in ancient times, successfully used military force to unite the Greek city states for the first time under a single ruler, also, by the way, the father of Alexander the Great. She tells a fascinating story about the day that she was appearing on a television program to urge President Bush to allow a greatly expanded role to the UN for the reconstruction of Iraq. Just then word came in of a massive truck bomb killing the head of the UN delegation in Iraq, a personal friend of Ms. Soderberg's, along with many other UN workers. True to form the UN then cut and ran, thereby giving the terrorists the victory that they were seeking. Also true to form Ms. Soderberg chose to blame Bush rather than the terrorists for the tragedy. What could be more telling than this? So, if you want to understand how privileged liberals, the kind of people who really DO regard the New York Times as the newspaper of record, such as tenured college professors and the kind of people who reside in places like Martha's Vineyard, the Hamptons, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Aspin, and Malibu view foreign affairs, this book is for you. On the other hand, if you come from the kind of family (like me) where the young people go to serve in the armed forces to get money for college, you probably won't agree with her point of view.

Obviously, Soderberg speaks from great experience. I found her argument persuasive, based on knowledge not the rhetoric we usually hear from those closeted at the American Enterprise Institute. And particularly given the current Administration's "my way or the highway" posture, it's refreshing to read a real defense of why it is in America's interest to pursue diplomacy that is multi-lateral and cooperative.

This work is a must read for reponsible and interested Americans. We need to know what role the U.S. can and should play in international affairs, particularly since the U.S. is the only economic, military, naval, and political superpower. This role is unprecedented in world history and while it can be the source of great promise for the U.S., it can also be the cause of great suspicion.
Despite what we learn from news sources and talking heads, many issues are complex. Ms. Soderberg makes them approachable and provides insights into how elected leaders and experts in foreign policy approach, or should approach, issues.
For a reader who would like to know just what the issues are with North Korea, global warming, terrorism, Iraq, and the Middle East, Ms. Soderberg provides a concise and understandable starting point. This book should be highly recommended to friends who are willing to ask questions instead of just accepting pablum from political spin doctors.

Of course we all knew the years following the Clinton administration would be a dizzying display of revisionism, seeking to explain away the broad expanse of utter failure. This is yet another example. It's a steaming pile just like your cat might cough up on the carpet. There's hardly a word in here that's accurate or insightful - one is tempted to cut all the pages into their individual component words, toss the mess in the air, and read whatever appears. It's bound to be more valuable than this.

Look. This author has had her ears pinned back over and over on the circuit promoting her book, by those who actually know the facts. She's a hack, and always was a hack. It's almost as if Clinton reached out of his limo to pluck someone off the street when filling her job - judging by this book, that may be precisely what he did. Whatever. It's over now.

The author's selective amnesia about how terrorism, especially Al-Quida, flourished long before George Bush ever became president is not astounding, it is expected from the goofy left. Bush bad, Clinton (her ex-boss) good. When is this baseless, childish tripe going to stop finding a publisher??

Woodward's book reads like an extended, objective newspaper report of Pres. Clinton's first term, especially the first budget cycle, and the tough economic/budget decisions he made. As we know now, Clinton's fiscal policies were much more "conservative," than those of his successor. Clinton's budgets were by their very nature fiscally sound, with no deficit spending, and new programs, the few there were, fully funded within the budget. Woodward's book provides an account of how that conservative fiscal policy developed, and shines some light on how his devotion to fiscal soundness affected the health care initiative he campaigned for and later put Hillary Clinton in charge of. This is a straight reporting book, with little analysis.

Good inside scopp and 'West Wing' reporting of what happened when President Clinton was running for President and the beginning of his first term. Interesting to see how each of the players felt about eachother and how some were slighted by eachother during the whole political process. Hillary's handling of several incidents is a good view into her charactoer for the future.

"The Agenda" reads pretty dull for the first 100 or so pages, skimming over Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign and the promises he would make (and sometimes, break) with celebrated muckraker Bob Woodward displaying more his gimlet eye for detail than his nose for news, or more unhappily for readers, any interest in characterizing the ideas and personalities of the Clintonistas in more than bold strokes.

Maybe Woodward wanted to give us some of the numbing sensation President Clinton experienced when he and his wife Hillary woke up in the White House, only to realize it wasn't Disneyland and they couldn't change the world overnight. Even with firm Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, there would be those who, whether out of caprice, malice, or simply not seeing issues the same way, wouldn't play ball.

Complicating matters was a national economy that Clinton had made the central concern of his campaign ("It's the economy, Stupid" became such a mantra Clinton insiders shortened it to ITES) and now threatened to bury him after years of profligate spending by his Republican predecessors. Before any meaningful change could occur, Clinton had to work on such capitalist esoterica as interest rates and deficit reduction.

The liberal side of Clinton balked: "I hope you're all aware we're all Eisenhower Republicans," Woodward recounts Clinton yelling at his cabinet. "We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?"

It is at this point, more than a third of the way in, that "The Agenda" zooms right up there with "The Brethren" and "The Final Days" in terms of Woodward tomes. Not that Woodward's prose ever sings (he is strictly meat-and-potatoes that way), but the story evolves into one of good intentions clouded by hubris and political calculations. Even when progress is made, passions run high, way high, too high.

Political consultants who should have been given letters of reference after the Inauguration are instead allowed to roam through the White House browbeating economic advisors about low poll numbers more than three years before the next presidential election. Congressional Republicans are ignored so contemptuously that conservative and moderate Democrats on the Hill get nervous.

And then there's Hillary, who while her husband desperately insists he's no tax-and-spender, casually tells a roomful of senators she'll need $100 billion in new revenue to nationalize health care. When a friendly Democrat asks for her to back up on that obvious red flag, she replies: "That's the truth and they better get used to it."

The book ends with the successful passage of Clinton's first budget and with Hillary's health care initiative still alive. In fact, things would get worse for Clinton before they got better; 1994 presented him with Republican control of the legislature for the first time in 40 years. That's probably not what he had in mind when he talked about being an "Eisenhower Republican."

As a character study, it's not much, but "The Agenda" lays out the early history of the Clinton Administration in what seems a fair and balanced as well as absorbing style. A lack of quotes hurts; Woodward notes that all his many interviews were done not for attribution, and won't be made public for 40 years.

Even Mark Felt didn't have that good a deal. Also the reader misses out on being able to understand who told Woodward what and gauging why they did so. But since some like George Stephanopoulos say Woodward was on the mark (even though his participation cost him Clinton's good graces), it seems like the reporting here was solid. Woodward isn't a pundit, thank God, and he's no Zola, but he shows here why he is considered by so many to be one of the best reporters ever.

The Agenda written by Bob Woodward, pertains to Bill Clinton's first year in office. It's mostly about the battle and struggle for the new (at the time) president to get his budget and economic recovery package passed through Congress. It's amazing, but I never realized how much of a tough job it is to be president.

Shortly after winning the presidency in November of 1992 over incumbent President George Bush Clinton soon had to both come to grips and realize that his work was cut out a lot more for him, than he, or his campaign staff could've ever realized. Ultimately, he had to accept the fact that he would have to do some drastic compromising from his campaign promises. Clinton of course campaigned to be a "New Democrat" who would restore the economy to the forgotten middle-class and overturn the Reagan-Era greed of the 1980s, by investing in jobs, education, and health insurance reform. After meeting with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, he soon realized that it wouldn't be so easy. As it would turn out, taking bold action to reduce the overwhelming national deficit would become the top-notch priority of his economic recovery plan, and would hog up most of his budget. Therefore his beloved domestic investment agenda would have to be sacrificed. Including his promised tax-cut for the middle-class.

So even before, let alone after Clinton took the oath of office, Clinton had his work cut out for him. He had to realize
early that his approval ratings would sink miserably and there would be disenchantment among his strongest supporters, let alone the American people. In many ways, two camps developed in his White House. There were the fiscal conservatives such as Robert Rubin, Leon Panetta, David Gergan. Then there were those from his campaign staff who wanted him to continue with his campaign pledges of investment such as Paul Begala, George Stephanapolis, and James Carville.

Greenspan's influence over the new president was amazing. Although it was from a neutral point of view, Greenspan
made Clinton understand how it was crucial that Clinton tackle the deficit. Or else long-term interest rates would never come down and the economy would never take off. Without the economy taking off, no way would Clinton ever be able to get back to doing the things that he was elected to do, let alone re-elected in 1996. Clinton had to come to accept that he would have to sacrifice many things, among them, his political popularity, but know that the long term effects would pay off dividends for both him politically, and for the US economy.

Fortunately for him, it did apparently work out for the best, and he did (with the extreme help of a Republican Congress
balance the federal budget in 1997) reduce the deficit and gave us a budget surplus. What should also be strongly considered is that he did this, at the behest of cutting the DOD and the intelligence community, which contributes to events such as September 11th, 2001.

What is also amazing about this book, is that Woodward gives you a fly-on-the-wall view of the battle to pass this
budget through both the House and the Senate. It also gives you the word for word account of a bitter phone conversation between Clinton and Nebraska Democratic Senator Bob Kerry, in which Clinton tells Kerry to go f--- himself, when Kerry refuses to vote for his budget, which turned out to be the crucial vote.

As it would turn out, Kerry would vote for it, making it a tie. Gore then gave the over the top vote and the budget was
passed.

This book was very, very good, and that is why I was able to go through it so quickly.

-Nicholas J. Vertucci

For a book that will certainly serve as a primary source for presidential historians because of its insider reporting, this book is extremely disappointing and indeed superficial. You get a kind of blow by blow report of Clinton's tumultuous first year in the White House with virtually no analysis and context, but instead just raw description. I was appalled at how much trash was in it.

The one nugget I took away was that in that first year, Clinton spent too much time chatting with aides due to his "lack of discipline" and enjoyment of exercising his mind with the extraordinary grasp he had of policy. But there is no exploration of his character, and indeed ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the details of the policies he was attempting to advance. As such, this book is like so much election journalism of today: covering the horse race but not the issues.

Not recommended, except for academics doing deep research.

Although its principles of organization can be a little confusing, this does not detract much from the fact this book is indispensable to anyone wishing elucidation on the confused issues surrounding the events of 1998. It is not for nothing that Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard. This very clearly presents points of law unknown to the layman, as well as explaining much in lawyerland which has not to do with law so much as tradition and accepted or unaccepted procedure, etc. Dershowitz's comparison of Starr's tactics to those of McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover are not just absolutely valid, but should be obviously valid to anyone. Any decent American should be infuriated at these tactics, which dwarf anything Clinton may have done. Dershowitz's book is eminently fair, and the negative comments of some reviewers can only be explained by the fact, now obvious for some months, that there is a large minority of Americans who have decided to hate Clinton no matter what, as if their salvation depended upon it, and with no regard whatsoever for the dangers presented to me, you, and everyone, by Starr's vicious excesses, not to mention the just as vicious excesses of the extreme Republican Right, a crowd whose nasty behavior includes a thinly disguised but obvious white supremacist bent. Who are these folks who so proudly align themselves with these McCarthyites and racists?

Please send me email address of Alan Dershowit

I am convinced that there are two Dershowitzs -- the sometimes rational thinker and the biased, arrogant law professor. I got the book on the assumption that I would get the rational Dershowitz. Wrong. This is much of the same drivel you see in several of his other books and writings. Sexual McCarthyism is an intriguing concept but don't expect to learn much about it in this book. Keep your receipt, you'll want to throw this one back.

I thought this was an excellent case for the defense. It is a disjointed book, to be sure: a new 30-page introduction precedes a series of prior published articles. The result is that you find yourself going over familiar ground over & over. I understand this was necessary to get the book out in time for the impeachment trial (and to ward off claims of 20-20 hindsight). Still, it's a viewpoint worth reading about. There are plenty of books out with the other side - we can see Ann Coulter on any number of food fight talk shows (and absolving Richard Nixon in the process on the O'Reilly Factor). As much as I disliked Dershowitz during the OJ trial, this was a better effort.

If you are among the many in this country who harbor an irrational, violent hatred for Clinton, then buy the books by Anne Coulter, Bill Bennett, Howard Kurtz, Micheal Isikoff, Christopher Hitchins, George Stefanopoulis, Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, and George Will, or just read any book which does nothing but confirm what you already think about Clinton and the state of the country. And then be sure to write an angry review of Dershowitz' book here without reading it, and then recommend one of the books from the Clinton haters. But if you are a sane, normal-thinking individual, then buy this book by Alan Dershowitz and you may actually learn something new.

I'm sure Mr. Tyrrell would be pleased to know that Steve Kangas not only read the book before his suicidal attempt to assassinate Richard Scaife (no doubt inspired by all the compassion and love of such Clintonistas as Sidney Blumenthal, James Carville, and Larry Flynt), but even gave it a star.

The cover photo is worth five stars. Alas: you can't judge a book by its cover.

A cursory reading of the chapter on Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose name is (predictably) lampooned by the author, revealed these gems:

"I have detected no evidence that Rodham experienced marijuana, either in brownies or small pipes, as was the fashion for some college gals in that period. Nor have I detected any other coping mechanisms enhancing her student days, such as LSD or certain mushroom concoctions favored by some of her Coat and Tie radical associates."

"Upon being welcomed into the young women's bedrooms, some of the young men, those unfettered by Christian chastity, attempted what young men attempt when placed in the vicinity of a nubile cutie's bed and lingerie chest."

"She arrived at the mansion overweight, wore her hair long and unkempt, and went without makeup or perfumes. Her spectacles were as thick as bullet-proof glass, and the lenses were encased in impressively ugly frames."

Yawn.

Mr. Tyrrell excels in meanness, pettiness, innuendo, and faulty logic. If there are any facts in his book, it's hard to say what form they'll finally have when a reader succeeds in chiseling them out of his prose.

This is one of the weirdest books I've read in a long time. Written by R. Emmett Tyrrell of American Spectator fame, this has to be one of the most scathing attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton ever written. I gave it five stars because it kept me in open mouthed awe throughout the entire read, as well as illiciting huge belly laughs over some of Tyrrell's word play, which can be truly brilliant. This book isn't a knee to the Clinton groin, it's a shotgun blast to the Clinton groin.

The book starts out with the L.D. Brown story. Brown was a close confidant of Clinton when he was Governor Clinton of Arkansas. Brown, with Clinton's help, attained a job with the CIA. Brown quickly became entangled in the Barry Seal/Mena drug trafficking operation. Brown is an important figure because he can link Clinton into the drug operations. This part of the book is essentially the same account that can be found in Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton". If Brown is to be believed, this is a devastating indictment of Bill Clinton and sets the tone for Tyrrell's examination of the Clintons.

The rest of the book traces Bill's ascension to the White House. We get an account of Bill and his education at Oxford and Yale, where he quickly hooked up with what Tyrrell calls the "Coat and Tie Radicals", which are those New Left hippies that smoked dope and engaged in Marxist thought on the weekends, but spent the rest of their time carefully cultivating their public image so as to land good positions in government, law and corporate America. Tyrrell shows that during the time between the 1960's and the 1990's, these Commies never changed their attitudes or beliefs. They simply waited through the Reagan years for their chance to impose their warped values on America. Their beliefs can be summed up in what Tyrrell calls the "kultursmog", a choking mess of touchy-feely and Marxist/Socialist ideas that clouds traditional American values. Tyrrell continues his assault on the Clintons by showing their financial scams, their rabid pursuit of power over everything else, how they are products of the corrupt "Ole Boy" network of Arkansas politics, and how the first year of the Clinton presidency, 1993, was an utter disaster for America. Tyrrell outlines all of the scandals and flubs that made the Clinton presidency the most corrupt and inept administration in American history. Tyrrell also looks at Clinton's childhood, throwing aspersions on Clinton's mother Virginia, who is portrayed as a loose woman without any morals. He also points out that we can't be sure who Clinton's father really is.

A separate chapter offers a treatment of Hillary Clinton and reveals the true colors of our illustrious First Lady. She is exposed as a closet Communist who clerked for a well known Marxist lawyer who defended the Black Panther Party. Hillary also edited a journal at Yale that was extremely hostile to authority figures. One edition depicted police officers as racist pigs who should be killed. Hillary's infamous behavior is also closely detailed. Apparently, our First Lady has a temper problem, and likes to heave objects in fits of volcanic anger.

Tyrrell explodes the Clinton mythos and shows them to be two black holes in power suits. The portrait painted here reveals them to be grasping, petty, manipulative power seekers without a shred of decency. They dragged America through the mud, and the country will forever be stained by the Clinton legacy. And this was written in 1996, well before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke.

It's important to note that Tyrrell uses an astounding vocabulary throughout the book. Words such as foozle, avuncular, and lumpen predominate. The style is also extremely snide and can get pretty ugly. Tyrrell pulls no punches in this treatise, and liberals will scream bloody murder while reading this, if they can finish it in the first place. It is, without a doubt, a polemic, and should be read accordingly. I have to give it five stars for its sheer audacity. I'll read it again.

Contrary to other reviews listed here, this contains many facts--and most aren't in dispute. This book gives you a true picture of both Clintons, not the spin images of the national media. My complaint? Tyrrell is not the writer he thinks his is, and the style grows tiresome.

While this book is a Political History it is also a psychohistory. Tyrrell tries to delve deep into President Clinton's Psyche and tell us what makes him tick. The Book Covers from Clinton's Birth through his first term and ends with the prediction he would not get re elected to a second term (WRONG), Tyrrell did not know about all the Illegal money raised from Asia that Clinton's campaign used to beef up his popularity before 96 (for More on that subject read Year Of The Rat by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II). Anyway, the book besides being a chronicle of Clinton's political beliefs and where they came from, it also chronicles many crimes and misdemeanors that Bill gets away with. Its a remarkable story. This book is a must read for us political wonks and also cold be a good reference source for Historians in the feature. Find out where the bodies are buried sort of speak.

Let me start out by noting that I am a strong supporter of Bill Clinton. This book attempts to be funny in the way Al Franken's political satires have succeeded, but Harry Shearer fails miserably. Perhaps I expected the book to humorously explain why some people hate Clinton (that is what the book says it will do, isn't it?). The book rambles on with anti-Republican sentiment and explains ideas most Americans have known about for years. Actually, the one funny point the author makes is the potential sainthood the Republican's have granted Ronald Reagen. The one reason he received such favorable press during his administration was because of his high public approval rating. His administration did nothing more or less than Clinton's (except inflate the national debt). If Clinton would have traded arms for hostages, he would have been burned at the stake. Nevertheless, if you want quality political satire, read Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot..., which succeeds in makes the points that Shearer can not make. Skip this book, I have already told you the funny and/or intelligent parts.

Harry Shearer reamains the most underrated American humorist of our time, replacing Jean Shepherd. He was great on SNL, wonderful on his own specials, but now he's making his mark with his radio program and this hilarious book. Instead of constantly extolling the obvious as his compatriots on SNL did, Harry continues to mine under the surface of his subject matter, and offers the most searing explanation of the Clinton administration yet. Miss this one at your own risk.

Harry Shearer has written, not just another book about people who hat Bill Clinton, but a book about why. I was impressed by how the author was able to convey a message of disgust with clear and precise facts.

While some people will find this book offensive and some will hate it outright, this reader thinks that most people will find this book a real pleasure to read. Shearer has a great knowledge of politics and how the political world turns and he displays this in every page of the book.

Shearer brings the reader little known facts about key Washington figures. Shearer allows the reader to choose whom he likes and whom he doesn't. The book is good. Easy reading from beginning to end. This book will keep you asking for more.

While Shearer gives the reader a quick insight about racism, the culture war and the generation gap, he does so with a unique blend of satire and humor. I think for the price you will make a great choice.

A fairly funny commentary on the state of politics at the end of the Clinton era. Shearer attacks pretty much everyone, but no doubt Republican partisans will be offended anyway, they seem to get upset about any criticism of their leaders, no matter how tepid or humorous. Generally, this book will not make you laugh out loud, and you will not feel compelled to treasure it always, but it is a fun, easy read and provides plenty of amusing insights and comic asides. Of course, you might want to keep on your bookshelf just to make your Republican friends go beat red on the sight of it.

maybe some expect a little more from the leader of their country.......

The book is a bit outdated now but still good for learning Perl and HTTP/web client programming that can be adapted for other languages as well. And since it's old, you can get it for cheap online and at used bookstores.

And for those stingy folks out there, you can read it online instead at the O'Reilly Open Book project:

http://oreilly.com/openbook/webclient/

I see little that could improve upon this book. Its examples are awful and assume a knowledge of Perl not expected of similar entry-level texts.

Avoid this book unless you have a great solid background in Perl. But then again, if that's the case you probably wouldn't need this book.

I personally found this book much less informative than I was hoping.

Most of the book is dedicated to explaining the ins and outs of HTTP. There is not enough sample code, and the code that is given is pretty basic.

As far as information about programming web clients with perl, I have found that it is more helpful to just do web seraches, and read the examples available on various web sites.

The book does do a good job of explaining HTTP and the how web clients operate. I just wish there had been more information about Perl clients specifically.

I wouldn't pay [as much] for this book. Look for it used, it's not hard to find.

Notice that the glowing reviews of this book date back to '98. The web has come a long way since then and this book just doesn't hold up well. Don't waste your money on this incomplete, poorly organized, obsolete book.

About 65 pages are dedicated for http details. This part is fairly well written. But then then you are hit by the reality. snippets just appear without much explanation....
LWP is also pathetic. I noticed that the people who gave good ratings for this book did so solely based on it s presentation of http. Not as a http client programming book of perl.

Bossie has written a well documented, well organized inclusive chronology of events of massive intelligence/national security emasculation by Clinton. A this is a 'what happened' book, not analysis, opinion or qualitative verbiage. Example: Marvin Cetron, professional futurists, wrote scenarios for Dep of State in 1992 forecasting crashing planes into buildings naming World Trade Center...multiple simultaneous attacks. Marvin is not in 9/11 report. Why listen to Marvin? He is the guy who forecast that Saddam would invade Kuwait...three years before the fact. Thank you Bossie for a complete record. Would be better if jacket cover did NOT have pejorative picture of Clinton on it...Bossie's book is not a personal attack on Clinton...just the facts, Mam, the sad murderous facts.

Rene

1) The book is worth buying for the half that is truthful. Yes, Clinton was responsible for nurturing not only Al Qaeda, but an incompetent intelligence community as well. Woolsey could not get in to see him, Deutch was a raving ego-maniac disdainful of security, and Tenet was first a pandering sychophant and later (under Bush) a world-class intelligence prostitute. Madeline Albright and Tony Lake, however, bear most of the blame--the Department of State has long abdicated its respopnsibility for being the *primary* collector, evaluator, translator, and disseminator of real-world unclassified information in all languages bearing on our national security and foreign policy. On Madeline Albright's watch, not only did State not pay attention to reality, they also actively repressed classified reports from the intelligence community on terrorism emergent. Tony Lake is something else--a well-intentioned individual with no clue about the complexities of the real world (Google for our "ten threats, twelves policies, and eight challengers")--it was only as he was leaving office that he "discovered" the "six fears."

2) The book is also half distortions and mis-representations. This is a hatchet job in advance of the 2006 elections. I am a moderate Republican (and the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction). The dirty little secret of the Bush Administration is that Dick Cheney was given both the terrorism and the intelligence portfolios from day one, and in his arrogance chose to ignore them both despite the fact that the Clinton Administration "woke up" at the end of its term and issues strong warnings. George Bush is also arrogant and ignorant--CIA tried desperately to warn him in person on 6 August 2001 and he dismissed them with a cavalier "OK, you've covered your ass now." Between a mendacious Vice President and an ignorant little bully of a President, America was completely unprotected in the months when intelligence actually had good cause for alarm and tried desperately--as did Richard Clark--to sound the alarm. Cheney chose instead to focus on secret meetings with Enron and Exxon, and to plan the invasion of Iraq, for which he welcomed a terrorism attack as a "pretext for war".

The reality is that the truth can be known, but one needs to search for it. There is no better way to scan the literature than to spend a couple of hours with all my reviews (sadly, Amazon allows us to make lists, but not to sort our reviews, so either use the lists or be patient in going through my reviews. They cover information society, intelligence, emerging threats, strategy and force structure, anti-Americanism, and the negative impact on national security of domestic U.S. politcs).

A few specifics:

1) any book endorsed by Woolsey and Novak, for divergent reasons, cannot be trusted to be objective.

2) The author is oblivious to the many books on intelligence from Allen, Baeur, Berkowitz, Codevilla, Gentry, Goodman, Gerecht, Fialka, Godson, Johnson, Levine, Odom, Riebling, Steele, Treverton, Wiebes, Zegart and more. This is a hatchet job with some nuggets, not a balanced piece of research with a historical perspective. Not a single one of these authors is in the bibliography.

3) The author's most grevious error is to confuse reduced presidential attention with incompetence. Clinton was very competent, it was the U.S. Intelligence Community, like the lightbulb in the psychologists joke ("how many to change a bulb? Irrelevant, the bulb has to want to change"), that chose to ignore General Al Gray, myself, and many others who from 1988 were agitating for improved coverage of terrorism and instability, and improved attention to open sources of information.

4) The author makes the usual mistake of failing to note that CIA and FBI failures were not from lack of funding, but from internal myopia and mis-direction. FBI, for example, redirected money appropriated by Congress for information technology, to pay for more travel by chiefs; CIA cut back on its clandestine service, and relied more heavily of foreign liaison lies, and completely failed to heed the 1999 NIMA Commission Report that demanded attention to sense-making and analytic desktop toolkits.

5) The author provides an unbalanced but useful review of the embassy bombings, Khobar Towers (which was sponsored by Iran), and the USS Cole, but in his epilogue, he appears brain-dead in thinking that Bush-Cheney's redirection of the military from Afghanistan to Iraq was brilliant. It was not. It was the most expensive catastrophic, corrupt, ignorant, and mendacious abuse of presidential power in modern history.

This leads to my final general comment: as unethical and incompetent as some individuals might have been in both the Clinton and the Bush Administrations, it is the "system" not the individuals that is broken. Congress is out of the game--incumbents shake down lobbyists for cash, not the other way around; both parties demand "party line" votes instead of conscience votes on behalf of specific constituencies; and the extremist Republican leadership of the House and Senate have abdicated their Constitutional responsibility to be the FIRST (Article 1) Branch of government, and instead chosen to serve as foot-soldiers for the President. This is treason and impeachable mis-behavior. The Executive is no better--Dick Cheney has swept aside the policy process, and it is now documented (see my review of "One Percent Doctrine") that he has experimented with isolating the President since President Ford, and under Bush, directed policies that were neither cleared by the bureaucracy, nor reported to and approved by the President. Cheney, not necessarily Bush, is clearly impeachable.

So buy and read this book, but do not stop there. We the People now have a digital memory, and we are being aroused from our slumber. Justice will be done, eventually. Both Administrations failed America, but only because the public failed to stem the corporate take-over of Washington, D.C., and failed to exercise its ultimate right to hold everyone accountable day to day, not just on election day.

During Clintons 8 years of terror, I attempted to convey to people that I knew, that Slick Willy was the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time and that all of the so called "good times" that America was supposedly enjoying was in reality all smoke and mirrors and that eventually the Clinton bubble would burst and the truth would come out.

The first bubble that burst was in 2000 with the stock market crash.

The second bubble was the recession and poor economy which even Greenspan now admits had it's foundations as early as 1994 even though it didn't surface untill 2001.

The third bubble was 9/11 as so many innocent people were murdered.

All of this could have been prevented if only we had a commander-in-chief that was as concerned with the white house as he was with the penthouse. Clinton is charismatic, I'll give him that, but so are circus clowns and I wouldn't want them running our country either.

In this book, Mr. Bossie reveals why at least one of those bubbles burst. Why it fell on Clinton's watch and perhaps, just another good reason not to believe what the mainstream media tries to brainwash us with.

I've read several books about the Clinton years, and was still shocked by the information in "Intelligence Failure". How could our country be so stupid about what went on during the Clinton Administration. How dare the media, and the deceived public blam President Bush for 9/11 when he had only been in office for 8 months. "Intelligence Failure" is yet another expose as to the goings-on of the Clinton Administration, and what that legacy is going to leave us...and what is yet to come from that legacy. It's a must read if you are interrested in what happened in the 90's and what is yet to result from the 90's leadership.

This book is full of logiacal falicies and other right wing propaganda. Why linger on the past and try to blame all the problems you can on Clinton. Is someone trying to take focus off one president and put it on another. If the republicans were so concerned about the 9/11 attacts they would stop trying to place blame and work to prevent another from happening. this book is on a Moot subject and is a complete waste of time