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Title: Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton ISBN: 0-7432-2224-5 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 09 June, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.03 (606 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Dreaming History
Comment: I have the audio version of this book. It tells the story of Hilary Clinton from her birth to the end of her husband term in office. I got this because I wanted to know what they were doing in the White House for 8 years. Now I am not some crazy right winger and I did listen to the entire book.
The story she tells is like the version you would hear from a college sorority girl. I say this because she sees the world though Rose color glasses. She really doesn't tell about the history just her personal observations. It seems like she is complaining all the time because the Republicans were out to get her and her husband. Everything she did was right but those evil doers kept stopping her from getting her health care proposals through.
The other big topic was women's rights and in this diatribe you hear how men all over the world are out to suppress women. I could see her point when she talked about some of the Asian countries but not here. She was a little peculiar when it came to some of her ante dotes like the one about Jackie Kennedy and when they tried to get her to go off a high dive. All she did was climb up and down the ladder if she would have jumped if would have been an interesting story. I will admit there were some funny ante dotes like the time when she described how the President taught his daughter to drive.
The book is petty when it came to accusations of other people. An example would be the story with Newt Gingrige, saying how he wouldn't help a bill because Bill Clinton snubbed him at his mother's funeral. I mean are these guys in High School. The worst topic of the book is whitewater. She brings it up again and again and again. I was sick of it when I was less than half way through.
She goes over historical points like WACO and the Oklahoma City bombings like they are minor footnotes giving more attention to how Kenneth Starr's indictments were all politically motivated.
I would have like to have heard how she interacted with Janet Reno or if they ever interacted at all, she does mention Madeline Albright a couple of times because they went to the same school.
All the people that they knew from Arkansas seemed to be all flim-flam men. At first they were all good and trustworthy but later the author was just shocked and dismayed at how her friends of good character were acting.
There are some statements that she makes that I simply do not believe to be true like the time when she said that Bill was trying to get congress to spend more on terrorism and that they should be watching the Muslim charities. I have read several other accounts on this in "The man who warned America", "Sleeping with the Devil" and "Why America Slept". They all told how this administration was doing nothing like that. It was easy to say she was doing this 5 years later with 20/20 hindsight.
The thing that drove me a little crazy in this whole story was near the end saying that Bush stole the election. She claimed to be an expert on the constitution but she doesn't understand the election process. Gore won the popular vote but did not get enough electoral votes. This makes the election federally democratic so that on candidate cannot be popular in one section of the country but must be elected by a majority of the states. I learned this in high school and I know Hillary Clinton learned it also because we come from the same city Park Ridge.
The part about the impeachment showed how vicious this woman can be. She was vitriolic in her accusation of anyone involved in that process. Man, I would never want to get on her bad side.
I would recommend this to any one who believes President Clinton never did anything wrong and was responsible in his job. If you don't believe that then you will get very angry when you read this book or listen to the tape.
Rating: 4
Summary: Liked it more than I thought I would
Comment: Most of these semi-auto-bios tend to be vanity efforts, lots of "I did this and I did that" without much real substance. Some of them are fun, and I like Hillary for the most part, and my discussion buds on the right were doing the quote-without-reading-it thing that they love to do, so I thought I'd give it a read.
I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, she did this and she did that, and she has an annoying habit of knowing everyone and figuring you know them, too. And it's clearly biased in favor of the Clintons (well, DUH, you know?). But it's much more entertaining than just about any book I've seen like it. And the history is really, well, fun. It's really interesting the way she ties happenings together, things that we mortals with regular jobs only hear bits of on TV. Her timeline is mostly seamless. It's full of facts and interesting people, peppered heavily with her basically moderate (yes, moderate, though women's economic issues is one of her favorite topics) commentary.
I only had time to do a little fact checking; there's a ton of stuff in there. I didn't find anything incorrect, though she clearly has >opinions< that others won't share.
Her take on Whitewater was especially good. Whitewater, of course, means the Whitewater real estate deal; Monica; the suicide of Bill's aide; and everything else that Starr's grand jury spent your taxpayer money investigating and finding almost entirely hot air. Hillary is critical almost to the point of being vituperative without being snide or particularly, given the circumstances, unfair, IMHO.
Her story and explanation of why she stayed married is very good, if possibly incomplete. The first reviews I read of this book were written by the right; they scoffed at what they felt was Hillary's short shrift given to the topic. It was apparent that these reviewers felt that this was the only issue of importance during the Clinton White House tenure. This book underlines, however, that ultraconservatives simply have their mind (sic) in the gutter. Hillary writes about a huge range of successes and failures, progress and regression, that occurred during those years, and more. Monica appears as she should, as a mostly manufactured but highly titillating sidebar.
Read this book. Agree with her or not, at least you'll know what Hillary really said. And you might just enjoy it in the reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good Historical Account
Comment: In politics and in life everyone has an angle. Hillary certainly had an angle in writing this book and i will not over specualate on her intentions for writing this book. However, i did enjoy the explanation of the behind the scene policy debates of the Clinton presidency. It was actually more objective than i expected. After reading this and a couple of books on President Clinton i have come to the conclusion that Bill and Hillary Clinton are a lot more moderate than their Republican enemies have labeled them to be. This is a good book and i recommend it. For a good book on President Clinton i recommend "First in His Class" by Bob Maraniss.
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Title: The Clinton Wars by Sidney Blumenthal ISBN: 0374125023 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 20 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré ISBN: 043935806X Publisher: Scholastic Pub. Date: 21 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor ISBN: 0786867175 Publisher: Miramax Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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