My Life [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

In the acknowledgments, former president Clinton thanks his editor, Robert Gottlieb, for helping him make the book half as long and twice as good. That man should get five stars! This book is way too long in its current form and not good enough.

Unless you are a friend or a big fan of Mr. Clinton, you will find this book not worth the effort. Fully half is devoted to descriptions of daily events during his two presidential terms. Almost all of the events you will probably remember from living through those years. Although these events were needed for completeness, there was little added that was new. I found the background descriptions of assisting the negotiations between Israel, Syria, and the Palestinians to be the most interesting part of the presidential section.

The best part of the book comes in the period before his first election in Arkansas. How did a young man from a very troubled home end up on the fast track for early political success? Although you will not be able to totally answer that question from reading this book, you will certainly know a lot more than you did before you started. I was especially impressed by the incredible loyalty that he showed to his stepfather, despite the awful treatment that his mother received. I did not realize that Mr. Clinton had only legally adopted the last name of Clinton after his mother remarried his stepfather.

I would have enjoyed a section about how young people can learn from his early experiences. Perhaps he will write something like that in a future book.

If you are looking for lots of insights into his personal inclination to cause pain in his marriage through affairs, you won't find anything new. You will find out the day when his wife stopped making him sleep on the sofa in the White House.

Although the book is mostly a diary of what he did and when, there are occasional moments of reflection in the book that make reading it rewarding. Unfortunately, the new reflections only occur about every 50 pages or so. Most of the best reflections are in the first half of the book.

The main ingredient that is missing from the book is the tremendous personal appeal that Mr. Clinton excites in many people. That element of his success is largely hidden in this account. He has a genuine liking for others, a sense of commitment to helping them and an incredible stamina for taking on challenges. It would have been good to combine this book with a CD of reminiscences about peoples' reactions to him at very critical times.

You also don't get much of a sense of his high intelligence, encyclopedic memory, and grasp of complex situations. I have heard Mr. Clinton go on for hours about difficult policy questions without notes and without knowing what questions would be asked. In fact, he tends to downplay those skills.

The material about his presidency would have been greatly enhanced with advice for future presidents.

The end of the book has an almost whiny tone in complaining about Right Wing conspiracies and recalcitrant Republicans in Congress. That part could have been edited down further. You'll get the idea after the first few pages of this discussion.

Frankly, I would not have finished the book except that many of my friends are in the book, and I found myself looking forward to their appearances in the text and what would be said about them.

For most people, you can read the first half and skip the rest.

If you really want to know about certain parts of his life and want to skip the others, the index can give you a pathway to create your own condensed books version of his life.

If you did not find him to be a person who inspired you, I suggest that you skip the book.

Seek to do the best for all!

I must confess I am a fan of political autobiographies. The first one I ever read was the Nixon autobiography; I've since read the various presidential and prime ministerial works past and present. Against these various tomes, Bill Clinton's memoirs, 'My Life', stacks up well. There is nothing earth-shattering and revealing here; there are some different nuances and a little more candour involved, but not a lot. After all, Clinton is still a relatively young man, and could have other political aspirations (he wouldn't be the first president to also serve in the Congress after the presidency), and of course, his wife has an active political life of her own, which I am certain was a major consideration in the tone and content of this volume.

I was fortunate to get advance reading material of this before the day of release, and got the local bookseller to permit me a purchase after midnight last night. Of course, like many people, I turned first to the part about Monica Lewinsky, who, for better or worse, will be a defining image of Clinton's presidency for the foreseeable future - history will likely be kinder to Clinton (as it ended up being for Nixon, and others who have stumbled in office), but for the present, this image holds true. There is a typical Clinton-esque mixture of self-reproach and blaming of others. Clinton's greatest ire is saved for Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor, who Clinton characterises as being the tip of the spear of a vast right-wing conspiracy including conservative white southerners who never worked for civil rights.

He discusses the icy situation with his wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea after the revelations, and how he slept on the sofa in different rooms for a significant period after the revelations. He also writes of his own self-examination and self-therapy (how does one do therapy with a president? Actually, there is some insight here, with his marriage counseling going on for a year after the incident). From visits with preachers (Clinton was never a traditionally religious man) to his own readings of self-help books and spiritual classics (one such, 'Imitation of Christ', by Thomas a Kempis, is a superb and well-known text, but not one I would have ever guessed useful for a president in this situation).

He gives some insights into the campaign trails, his early Arkansas experiences prior to national politics, and the two presidential elections, the first against the elder Bush, and the second against Bob Dole. He also takes good account of his childhood - the stories of his mother and various male figures in his early life are quite interesting, and beyond what was public during his presidential days. Even the derivation of his name - William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, has a story behind it worth reading.

One of the key points of interest of any political autobiography is the commentary and speculation the author makes on present and future situations, and Clinton's is no exception. He mentions his own assessment of the danger Iraq posed (he would have rated it no higher than number six on his list of priorities), and claims to have been more forceful in warning the incoming Bush administration about the dangers of Osama Bin Ladin. He also gives interesting perspectives on allies and other foreign leaders (John Major and Tony Blair, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Yasir Arafat, Ehud Barak, etc.).

In all, Clinton takes some of the blame for the troubles of his presidency, but shifts quite a bit of it to others, too. He also takes credit where credit is due for some of the successes in his presidency, but on the whole, as is typically true in such writings, casts the best of possible lights on most of his actions and the outcomes. Being an extrovert with a penchant for introspection, it is a wonder that this book could be contained in a mere 1000 or so pages.

Love him or hate him (and it is amazing how few people have neutral feelings about him, as he experienced and wrote about in his book), Clinton is a figure politicians must deal with for some time to come, and historians will likely rarely tire of debating and analysing.

Informativ ist dieses Buch in vielerlei Hinsicht, aber es ist wahrlich kein Lesegenuss. Die Bemerkungen zu Clintons Schreibstil im College, die hier im Anfang zitiert werden, scheinen immer noch zu gelten. Ansonsten liest es sich eher wie der zusammenfassende Bericht einer sehr langen Reihe von Besuchen bei einem Therapeuten aus der Sicht des Patienten, der alle seine neuen Erkenntnisse über sein eigenes Leben ausbreiten möchte  was Bill Clinton ja in den Werbetouren für dieses Buch immer wieder getan hat. Man muss dabei feststellen, dass er als Interviewpartner und Redner wesentlich überzeugender und angenehmer ist als als Autor.