Taylor Branch - The Clinton Tapes [96] Unabridged torrent

The Clinton Tapes highlights major events of Clinton’s two terms, including war in Bosnia, the anti-deficit crusade, health reform failure, anti-terrorist strikes, peace initiatives, the 1996 re-election campaign, and Whitewater investigations culminating in his 1999 impeachment trial.

Michiko Kakutani
…leaves us with an intimate portrait of the commander in chief hanging out with an old pal, occasionally posing for history, but more often using Mr. Branch as a late-night sounding board and stenographer…for avid Bubba watchers this book still adds interesting filigree to our already voluminous knowledge of Mr. Clinton. It captures his restless intelligence, his quicksilver moods, his stream-of-consciousness thinking, veering from "personal insight or grand analysis to minute statistical detail."
—The New York Times

Library Journal
In secret, often late-night sessions, Pulitzer Prize winner Branch (America in the King Years) met with Bill Clinton almost 80 times during his presidency to tape record Clinton's ruminations across a variety of topics. The author would direct the discussions by asking poignant questions and would follow up by recording his own take on the conversations. Branch now presents the results of this collaboration (with Clinton also having used his recorded thoughts for his own memoir, My Life). Covered here, in what the author acknowledges is neither history nor autobiography, are all the major topics—e.g., foreign policy, NAFTA, sex scandals, and Whitewater—along with many personal and political anecdotes. Branch excellently captures Clinton's emotions, notably frustration with speaker of the house Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress, and anger over his impeachment and with the media's emphasizing the salacious details of the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky matters. Especially revealing is Clinton's speaking of a bitter argument with Vice President Al Gore over the reasons Gore lost the 2000 election. VERDICT Branch's lucid writing and keen interviewing skills keep this book from being a disjointed series of ramblings. The unique format of presidential recollections and the author's follow-up form a narrative that will fascinate informed readers and American presidency scholars.

Taylor Branch is the bestselling author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65; At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968; and The Clinton Tapes. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.