Description
'The description of Clinton’s goals and thinking is more candid and more complex than in Clinton’s 2004 memoir, MY LIFE' USA Today
‘The day Boris was found at the White House…drunk and in his undies’
News story, Express 17/9
‘The story behind this book reads like the plot of a Hollywood movie…I have seldom read a more compelling account of a leader in power.’
The Sunday Times 27/9
‘President Clinton poured his heart out in secret midnight sessions over eight years at the White House….the book offers an unprecedented look at Clinton. Branch says: “The caricature of him was of an aimless, undisciplined rock star with a gift for politics but no inner core, and I found that impossible to reconcile with the Clinton I saw up close. He came from a place of mission and had an idealism sorely lacking in American political culture.”’
Interview, Observer 4/10
‘These tapes now make up the pages of Branch’s 707-page book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, which went on sale in the United Sales this week to great anticipation. For those looking for more juicy anecdotes from the chaotic Clinton White House, Branch’s weighty book does not disappoint’
Irish Independent 3/10
‘For a close-up look at Bill Clinton’s presidency, Taylor Branch’s book is hard to beat. The anecdotes it contains range from heavy-duty insights into the relationship between Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin to Elizabeth Taylor’s question about whether Clinton has checked out Sophia Loren’s breasts at a state dinner. The rowdy, discursive, intellectual brilliance of the man is evident on almost every page, and so is the self-indulgence, self-pity and self-destructiveness. Compared with the buttoned-up cool of Barack Obama, Clinton is a one-man carnival – a magician, tightrope walker, juggler, mesmerist, hot-dog eating contestant and burlesque show…to the extent that Branch’s portrait rescues politics from ignominy, he has done a real public service; that he has done this while vividly portraying an exuberant American original is cause for joy’
Scotsman 24/10
‘I have seldom read a more compelling account of a leader in power than The Clinton Tapes, said Robert Harris in the Sunday Times’
Review of reviews, The Week 24/10
‘The author has the rigour of a historian and the keen eye for detail of a journalist. The book is bursting with telling anecdotes, fascinating vignettes and surprising insights into the towering complexities of a president who seems more accomplished and significant now than he ever did when he was in office…Branch’s book, not to mention the unpublished tapes, will be a goldmine for historians. In the meantime…this is a richly rewarding read’
Daily Telegraph 21/11
‘The result of 79 long interviews the writer held with Clinton while he was in the White House. There are no great revelations about sex or cigars but they show how tawdry those years were. What a waste. Clinton was so clever, imaginative and gifted but destroyed by his own cynicism. A great lesson in US politics.’
Victor Sebestyen, Books of the Year, Evening Standard 26/11
‘Craig Seligman, reviewing it for Bloomberg News, mentioned Branch’s reference to “a major predawn security alarm when Secret Service agents discovered Boris Yeltsin alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi.” “Although the book is 700pages long,” concluded Al Kamen in the Washington Post, the author “keeps things moving along nicely”. And with Clinton, who in 1998 compared Osama bin Laden to a transnational James Bond movie villain, it’s hard to have a really dull moment’
Review of reviews, The Oldie Dec issue
'Serious students of American presidential politics will be fascinated by Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes, a treat for the aficionado because it comes out so soon after the events the President describes. These recordings of Bill Clinton's late-night conversations in the White House with Branch were made in secret, for fear they might be subpoenaed, and offer riveting detail of how an administration operates under pressure'
‘Books of the Year’, The Sunday Times 6/12
'Branch sat with Clinton night after night as they produced the recorded archive from which this account is derived. Nobody was closer to Clinton for longer and this is a source like no other. There is not much in Alan Clark's political life and times that can compete'
The Times 5/12
‘Branch talked to Clinton through foreign, domestic as well as personal crisis’
‘Christmas page-turners’, Total Politics Dec issue
‘At moments Clinton rants and rages, at others he becomes tearful, occasionally he gets bored and sometimes he even falls asleep. One memorable exchange, just after he has been trounced in the 1994 midterm elections, begins with Clinton in the White House barber’s chair, exhausted and frequently nodding off mid-sentence, only to rouse himself for a renewed bout of defiance and self-pity before slumping back again. Branch leaves him still talking to himself, and wonders if the president is suffering from narcolepsy, or something worse’
London Review of Books 17/12
‘Historian Taylor Branch’s account of the Clinton presidency is the most compelling biography of the year’
Irish Examiner 12/12
‘The ground covered in this secret historiographical project – Bosnia, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Haiti, the Middle East – is interesting, but not half as interesting as the proposition the book itself constitutes, is history what you do or what you record?
Observer 29/8
‘A firsthand narrative details a secret project in which Bill Clinton met Branch regularly during his presidency’
The Times 18/9
‘I have seldom read a more compelling account of a leader in power’
Robert Harris, Sunday Times 12/9
‘The former president comes over as you’d expect: flawed and feeling victimised, but an intelligent, able and principled politician, none the less, who was able to be frank about his failures. It’s interesting to see Clinton’s enjoyment of politics spill out as he assesses his allies with penetrating insights’
The Herald 4/9
‘The day Boris was found at the White House…drunk and in his undies’
News story, Express 17/9
‘The story behind this book reads like the plot of a Hollywood movie…I have seldom read a more compelling account of a leader in power.’
The Sunday Times 27/9
‘President Clinton poured his heart out in secret midnight sessions over eight years at the White House….the book offers an unprecedented look at Clinton. Branch says: “The caricature of him was of an aimless, undisciplined rock star with a gift for politics but no inner core, and I found that impossible to reconcile with the Clinton I saw up close. He came from a place of mission and had an idealism sorely lacking in American political culture.”’
Interview, Observer 4/10
‘These tapes now make up the pages of Branch’s 707-page book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, which went on sale in the United Sales this week to great anticipation. For those looking for more juicy anecdotes from the chaotic Clinton White House, Branch’s weighty book does not disappoint’
Irish Independent 3/10
‘For a close-up look at Bill Clinton’s presidency, Taylor Branch’s book is hard to beat. The anecdotes it contains range from heavy-duty insights into the relationship between Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin to Elizabeth Taylor’s question about whether Clinton has checked out Sophia Loren’s breasts at a state dinner. The rowdy, discursive, intellectual brilliance of the man is evident on almost every page, and so is the self-indulgence, self-pity and self-destructiveness. Compared with the buttoned-up cool of Barack Obama, Clinton is a one-man carnival – a magician, tightrope walker, juggler, mesmerist, hot-dog eating contestant and burlesque show…to the extent that Branch’s portrait rescues politics from ignominy, he has done a real public service; that he has done this while vividly portraying an exuberant American original is cause for joy’
Scotsman 24/10
‘I have seldom read a more compelling account of a leader in power than The Clinton Tapes, said Robert Harris in the Sunday Times’
Review of reviews, The Week 24/10
‘The author has the rigour of a historian and the keen eye for detail of a journalist. The book is bursting with telling anecdotes, fascinating vignettes and surprising insights into the towering complexities of a president who seems more accomplished and significant now than he ever did when he was in office…Branch’s book, not to mention the unpublished tapes, will be a goldmine for historians. In the meantime…this is a richly rewarding read’
Daily Telegraph 21/11
‘The result of 79 long interviews the writer held with Clinton while he was in the White House. There are no great revelations about sex or cigars but they show how tawdry those years were. What a waste. Clinton was so clever, imaginative and gifted but destroyed by his own cynicism. A great lesson in US politics.’
Victor Sebestyen, Books of the Year, Evening Standard 26/11
‘Craig Seligman, reviewing it for Bloomberg News, mentioned Branch’s reference to “a major predawn security alarm when Secret Service agents discovered Boris Yeltsin alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi.” “Although the book is 700pages long,” concluded Al Kamen in the Washington Post, the author “keeps things moving along nicely”. And with Clinton, who in 1998 compared Osama bin Laden to a transnational James Bond movie villain, it’s hard to have a really dull moment’
Review of reviews, The Oldie Dec issue
'Serious students of American presidential politics will be fascinated by Taylor Branch's The Clinton Tapes, a treat for the aficionado because it comes out so soon after the events the President describes. These recordings of Bill Clinton's late-night conversations in the White House with Branch were made in secret, for fear they might be subpoenaed, and offer riveting detail of how an administration operates under pressure'
‘Books of the Year’, The Sunday Times 6/12
'Branch sat with Clinton night after night as they produced the recorded archive from which this account is derived. Nobody was closer to Clinton for longer and this is a source like no other. There is not much in Alan Clark's political life and times that can compete'
The Times 5/12
‘Branch talked to Clinton through foreign, domestic as well as personal crisis’
‘Christmas page-turners’, Total Politics Dec issue
‘At moments Clinton rants and rages, at others he becomes tearful, occasionally he gets bored and sometimes he even falls asleep. One memorable exchange, just after he has been trounced in the 1994 midterm elections, begins with Clinton in the White House barber’s chair, exhausted and frequently nodding off mid-sentence, only to rouse himself for a renewed bout of defiance and self-pity before slumping back again. Branch leaves him still talking to himself, and wonders if the president is suffering from narcolepsy, or something worse’
London Review of Books 17/12
‘Historian Taylor Branch’s account of the Clinton presidency is the most compelling biography of the year’
Irish Examiner 12/12
‘The ground covered in this secret historiographical project – Bosnia, the North American Free Trade Agreement, Haiti, the Middle East – is interesting, but not half as interesting as the proposition the book itself constitutes, is history what you do or what you record?
Observer 29/8
‘A firsthand narrative details a secret project in which Bill Clinton met Branch regularly during his presidency’
The Times 18/9
‘I have seldom read a more compelling account of a leader in power’
Robert Harris, Sunday Times 12/9
‘The former president comes over as you’d expect: flawed and feeling victimised, but an intelligent, able and principled politician, none the less, who was able to be frank about his failures. It’s interesting to see Clinton’s enjoyment of politics spill out as he assesses his allies with penetrating insights’
The Herald 4/9
Présentation de l'éditeur
Branch interviewed President Clinton 78 times between 1993 and 2001 for roughly two hours each time. The President's side of those conversations formed the basis of his own memoir. Branch, immediately after each session, recorded his take not only on the content of their conversations, but on Clinton's demeanor, moods, puzzlements and the homely aspects of his and his family's life in the West Wing. Because the mission was confidential, Branch encountered mostly the permanent, anonymous staff at the official residence: the ushers and butlers, who guided him to await Clinton in various rendezvous spots. Several tape sessions took place in the family den next to the President's bedroom, on a table next to Hillary's collection of ornamental frogs, or in the upstairs Solarium. Most took place in the President's private office.
The book highlights major events from Clinton's two terms, including war in Bosnia, the antideficit crusade, health reform failure, antterrorist strikes, peace initiatives, the 1996 re-election campaign, and Whitewater investigations culminating in his 1999 impeachment trial. It is a rare look at the pressures of a job that Branch watched age this relatively young president.
The book highlights major events from Clinton's two terms, including war in Bosnia, the antideficit crusade, health reform failure, antterrorist strikes, peace initiatives, the 1996 re-election campaign, and Whitewater investigations culminating in his 1999 impeachment trial. It is a rare look at the pressures of a job that Branch watched age this relatively young president.
