This first volume of Bill Clinton’s biography, taking the story as far as his presidential election victory in 1992, comes at a peculiar time. Unlike many of the hasty invectives pronounced upon the 42nd president, Nigel Hamilton’s study is written on the grand scale, drawing on much of the published record and delving further with interviews and insights. Yet it has been published too late to take account of what Hillary Clinton has to say in her recent chart-topping memoirs (soon to be a staple of second-hand bookshops). And it has been published prior to Bill Clinton’s autobiography and the release of his archives. Nigel Hamilton has put in an awful lot of work for a biography that will soon be comprehensively superseded by the release of new material.
Despite these limitations, Bill Clinton: An American Journey is a gripping account of the rise of one of the most charismatic politicians of our age. The author of the best selling JFK: Reckless Youth, Hamilton is no stranger to writing long books about over-sexed leaders. Indeed, he is no stranger to writing long books trying to prise out the sex lives of those, like Field- Marshal Montgomery, where no such proclivities were thought to exist — or matter. With Clinton, there is hardly even the need to look for salacious material. It is everywhere. He appears to have had a sex life so active that one wonders how he found time to be a committed Baptist.
That Clinton’s second term in office was ruined by Monica Lewinsky’s revelations is hardly in dispute. But Hamilton argues that ironically it was Gennifer Flowers’ sallegations (and Bill and Hillary’s televised show of unity in reaction to them) that put name recognition and impetus into Clinton’s presidential campaign, setting him on course for the White House in the first place.
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