Reviews for First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton

The average rating for First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-04-14 00:00:00 Debra Gulick In this age of extreme partisanship it is difficult to find a neutral book about Bill or Hillary Clinton. While most politicians manage to antagonize one side or the other (or both), feelings about the Clintons are hyper-ventilated. Many people fall into one of two camps: the Clintons are evil and represent all that is wrong with politics, or they are two people who have devoted their lives to serving the public and making things better for working-class Americans. One of the reasons that David Maraniss's biography of the early Bill Clinton is so engrossing is because he neither has an ax to grind with the Clintons, nor does he think that either of them are remotely close to pillars of virtue. This book was written during Clinton's presidency, in the mid 1990s, and takes us only through Clinton's decision to formally announce his candidacy for the presidency on 10/3/91. Maraniss focuses on who Bill Clinton really is, or perhaps a better way to phrase it is that he tries to focus on who Bill Clinton really is. As Maraniss notes, Clinton (and Hillary too later on in the book) is a rash of contradictions: someone equally at home in a rural black church or playing golf at a ritzy country club where all the members are white. Clinton was constantly seeking the middle ground with people, something which was a harbinger of what he tried to do later as president. Maraniss begins by discussing the death of Clinton's father, William Blythe, in an auto accident before Clinton is even born. As one can imagine, this has a profound effect on Clinton's life (he was born William Jefferson Blythe but later legally changed his last name to Clinton) as he grew up without a father. This caused Clinton to continually seek out potential father figures as he grew up and even when he was a young adult. While his fun-loving mother, Virginia, remarried, Clinton had an uneasy relationship with his alcoholic and abusive step-father Roger Clinton. This affected Clinton too - probably much more so than he let on with friends as he would talk about his biological father's death buy kept fairly mum about Roger Clinton and his excesses. From boyhood, Clinton alternately attracted and repelled people. Many people were drawn into his orbit by his charm and charisma. Others were put off by his glad-handing and apparent deviousness. Maraniss traces these qualities through Clinton's youth in Hope and then Hot Springs, his high school years, his college years at Georgetown, then Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and then Yale Law School, and then throughout his rise in Arkansas politics. One quality that Maraniss notes but does not dwell upon is the penchant that Clinton had (and probably still has) for distancing himself from someone once that person is no longer of much use to him. This is especially true when Clinton was a young governor in Arkansas, willing to sacrifice staff members in order to push blame for something off of himself and onto them. I remember this trait coming up while I was reading Dan Balz's book about the 2008 presidential primaries and election, when he was describing Bill's forlorn efforts to help Hillary try to win the Democratic nomination. It is just something that stuck out to me from my reading that book, and Maraniss happened to hit on the same trait. This is an excellent, non-partisan look at the rise of Bill Clinton (and Hillary as well). Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Clintons, presidential biographies, or Arkansas politics. Grade: A

Review # 2 was written on 2010-12-21 00:00:00 Patrick Hennessy I really tore through this, it was fascinating and readable and I highly recommend it. It really seems like Bill was shooting for the presidency from about age twelve. He seems to have been sorta like Lyndon Johnson; from what I gathered from reading this and a bio of LBJ, both of these guys were born to be politicians, always working the room and keeping tabs on people and figuring out how they are going to run the next campaign. One bonus about this book is that it also serves as a partial biography of Hillary (though obviously there isn't as much about her as there is about Bill). This was written in the mid 90s, and Maraniss writes several times about how people thought Hillary could have had just as successful a political career as Bill, and how she was a better law professor and maybe even a better student, but she sacrificed some independence and moved to Arkansas and attached herself to him. Of course today we know that she would become Senator Clinton and Secretary of State Clinton and almost President Clinton herself, but back then she seemed to have made the decision that it would be all about Bill and his rise.