A relentless, sometimes telling but one-sided and rancorous indictment of a former president.
Bill Clinton’s sins—great and small—are explored in this exposé of the 42nd president.
Debut author Anagnos, a political consultant who worked on George H.W. Bush’s 1992 presidential campaign, draws mainly on secondary sources to chronicle what he sees as Clinton’s dishonesty, lechery, and corruption, dubbing him “the American Caligula” after the notoriously depraved Roman emperor. (Hillary Clinton, painted here as an icy, power-mad harridan forever shrieking obscenities at anyone within earshot, plays a supporting role as Machiavellian co-architect of her husband’s misdeeds.) The author’s sources include conservative anti-Clinton books and Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s investigation report. Anagnos’ exhaustive narrative moves from Clinton’s student days pulling strings to dodge the Vietnam War draft to his supposed drug abuse, political sleazemongering, and womanizing during his period as Arkansas governor. The author then reconstructs Clinton’s many presidential scandals, from the Monica Lewinsky affair—recounted in entertaining detail here, complete with transcripts of his gassy prevarications—to allegations that he cheated on a New York Times crossword puzzle. (Anagnos spends less time discussing Clinton’s policies but criticizes him for shrinking the military, offering weak responses to terrorist attacks, and veering off on progressive social causes.) The author presents lucid, well-informed discussions of the better-attested failures of the president’s regime, including the bloody attacks on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas; the fund-raising improprieties of Clinton and Vice President Al Gore; and the pardoning of well-heeled miscreants like Marc Rich. Less convincingly, Anagnos sometimes runs down the rabbit hole of right-wing conspiracy theory, insinuating that the Oklahoma City bombing was masterminded by Muslim terrorists; the crash of TWA Flight 800 was caused by a U.S. Navy missile; the Vince Foster suicide was actually a murder; and some 60 Clinton associates and opponents met with “mysterious” deaths. The result is much dark and dubious rumination. The Starr investigation was actually controlled by Clinton, the author writes, calling the independent counsel “a coward, so paralyzed with fear in the face of naked evil that he would…pretend not to see it,” which doesn’t fit with the official’s bold pursuit of the Lewinsky probe to the point of getting the president impeached. There’s plenty of red meat here to delight Clinton critics, but Anagnos’ evident distaste for the man sometimes crowds out objectivity and common sense.
A relentless, sometimes telling but one-sided and rancorous indictment of a former president.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-949345-00-1
Page Count: 678
Publisher: Songona Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.”...
The writing life at age 85.
In this collection of 14 autobiographical essays, former U.S. Poet Laureate Hall (Christmas at Eagle Pond, 2012, etc.) reflects on aging, death, the craft of writing and his beloved landscape of New Hampshire. Debilitated by health problems that have affected his balance and ability to walk, the author sees his life physically compromised, and “the days have narrowed as they must. I live on one floor eating frozen dinners.” He waits for the mail; a physical therapist visits twice a week; and an assistant patiently attends to typing, computer searches and money matters. “In the past I was often advised to live in the moment,” he recalls. “Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy….” Happily, he is still able to write, although not poetry. “As I grew older,” he writes, “poetry abandoned me….For a male poet, imagination and tongue-sweetness require a blast of hormones.” Writing in longhand, Hall revels in revising, a process that can entail more than 80 drafts. “Because of multiple drafts I have been accused of self-discipline. Really I am self-indulgent, I cherish revising so much.” These essays circle back on a few memories: the illness and death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, which sent him into the depths of grief; childhood recollections of his visits to his grandparents’ New Hampshire farm, where he helped his grandfather with haying; grateful portraits of the four women who tend to him: his physical therapist, assistant, housekeeper and companion; and giving up tenure “for forty joyous years of freelance writing.”
That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.” For the author, writing has been, and continues to be, his passionate revenge against diminishing.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0544287044
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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