Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency

A decade-and-a-half after President William Jefferson Clinton first took the oath of office, biographer Nigel Hamilton tells the riveting story of what was possibly the greatest self-reinvention of a president in office in modern times. The Clinton presidency began disastrously—kicking off with the worst transition in living memory and deteriorating through a series of fiascos, from gays in the military to Hillary Clinton's failed health care reform.  How Bill Clinton faced up to his failures and refashioned himself in the White House thereafter is an epic, hitherto unwritten story—a story that climaxes with the trouncing  of Bob Dole in the landslide presidential election in 1996. Clinton began his second term as the undisputed and tremendously popular leader of the Western world.

 

In vivid prose, Hamilton charts Clinton's dramatic reversal of fortune and his ultimate triumph over himself—and his foes. Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency is a riveting narrative of American politics, an incisive character portrait, and powerful reminder of what a  great president can accomplish.

Nigel Hamilton is the author of Monty, an award-winning three-volume biography of World War II commander Bernard Montgomery, of JFK: Reckless Youth, a bestselling narrative of the early life President John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton: An American Journey. He is a Fellow of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston.