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First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton
Who exactly is Bill Clinton, and why was he, of all the brilliant and ambitious men in his generation, the first in his class to reach the White House?
Drawing on hundreds of letters, documents, and interviews, David Maraniss explores the evolution of the personality of our forty-second president from his youth in Arkansas to his 1991 announcement that he would run for the nation's highest office.
In this richly textured and balanced biography, Maraniss reveals a complex man full of great flaws and great talents. First in His Class is the definitive book on Bill Clinton.
Drawing on hundreds of letters, documents, and interviews, David Maraniss explores the evolution of the personality of our forty-second president from his youth in Arkansas to his 1991 announcement that he would run for the nation's highest office.
In this richly textured and balanced biography, Maraniss reveals a complex man full of great flaws and great talents. First in His Class is the definitive book on Bill Clinton.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
78 people are currently reading
1959 people want to read
About the author
David Maraniss
28 books369 followersDavid Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and the author of four critically acclaimed and bestselling books, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton, They Marched Into Sunlight War and Peace, Vietnam and America October 1967, and Clemente The Passion and Grace of Baseballs Last Hero. He is also the author of The Clinton Enigma and coauthor of The Prince of Tennessee: Al Gore Meets His Fate and "Tell Newt to Shut Up!"
David is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Pulitzer for national reporting in 1993 for his newspaper coverage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. He has won several other notable awards for achievements in journalism, including the George Polk Award, the Dirksen Prize for Congressional Reporting, the ASNE Laventhol Prize for Deadline Writing, the Hancock Prize for Financial Writing, the Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Frankfort Book Prize, the Eagleton Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Prize, and Latino Book Prize.
"
David is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Pulitzer for national reporting in 1993 for his newspaper coverage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. He has won several other notable awards for achievements in journalism, including the George Polk Award, the Dirksen Prize for Congressional Reporting, the ASNE Laventhol Prize for Deadline Writing, the Hancock Prize for Financial Writing, the Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Frankfort Book Prize, the Eagleton Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Prize, and Latino Book Prize.
"
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
April 14, 2017
In this age of extreme partisanship it is difficult to find a neutral book about Bill or Hillary Clinton. While most politicians manage to antagonize one side or the other (or both), feelings about the Clintons are hyper-ventilated. Many people fall into one of two camps: the Clintons are evil and represent all that is wrong with politics, or they are two people who have devoted their lives to serving the public and making things better for working-class Americans. One of the reasons that David Maraniss's biography of the early Bill Clinton is so engrossing is because he neither has an ax to grind with the Clintons, nor does he think that either of them are remotely close to pillars of virtue.
This book was written during Clinton's presidency, in the mid 1990s, and takes us only through Clinton's decision to formally announce his candidacy for the presidency on 10/3/91. Maraniss focuses on who Bill Clinton really is, or perhaps a better way to phrase it is that he tries to focus on who Bill Clinton really is. As Maraniss notes, Clinton (and Hillary too later on in the book) is a rash of contradictions: someone equally at home in a rural black church or playing golf at a ritzy country club where all the members are white. Clinton was constantly seeking the middle ground with people, something which was a harbinger of what he tried to do later as president.
Maraniss begins by discussing the death of Clinton's father, William Blythe, in an auto accident before Clinton is even born. As one can imagine, this has a profound effect on Clinton's life (he was born William Jefferson Blythe but later legally changed his last name to Clinton) as he grew up without a father. This caused Clinton to continually seek out potential father figures as he grew up and even when he was a young adult. While his fun-loving mother, Virginia, remarried, Clinton had an uneasy relationship with his alcoholic and abusive step-father Roger Clinton. This affected Clinton too - probably much more so than he let on with friends as he would talk about his biological father's death buy kept fairly mum about Roger Clinton and his excesses.
From boyhood, Clinton alternately attracted and repelled people. Many people were drawn into his orbit by his charm and charisma. Others were put off by his glad-handing and apparent deviousness. Maraniss traces these qualities through Clinton's youth in Hope and then Hot Springs, his high school years, his college years at Georgetown, then Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and then Yale Law School, and then throughout his rise in Arkansas politics. One quality that Maraniss notes but does not dwell upon is the penchant that Clinton had (and probably still has) for distancing himself from someone once that person is no longer of much use to him. This is especially true when Clinton was a young governor in Arkansas, willing to sacrifice staff members in order to push blame for something off of himself and onto them. I remember this trait coming up while I was reading Dan Balz's book about the 2008 presidential primaries and election, when he was describing Bill's forlorn efforts to help Hillary try to win the Democratic nomination. It is just something that stuck out to me from my reading that book, and Maraniss happened to hit on the same trait.
This is an excellent, non-partisan look at the rise of Bill Clinton (and Hillary as well). Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Clintons, presidential biographies, or Arkansas politics.
Grade: A
This book was written during Clinton's presidency, in the mid 1990s, and takes us only through Clinton's decision to formally announce his candidacy for the presidency on 10/3/91. Maraniss focuses on who Bill Clinton really is, or perhaps a better way to phrase it is that he tries to focus on who Bill Clinton really is. As Maraniss notes, Clinton (and Hillary too later on in the book) is a rash of contradictions: someone equally at home in a rural black church or playing golf at a ritzy country club where all the members are white. Clinton was constantly seeking the middle ground with people, something which was a harbinger of what he tried to do later as president.
Maraniss begins by discussing the death of Clinton's father, William Blythe, in an auto accident before Clinton is even born. As one can imagine, this has a profound effect on Clinton's life (he was born William Jefferson Blythe but later legally changed his last name to Clinton) as he grew up without a father. This caused Clinton to continually seek out potential father figures as he grew up and even when he was a young adult. While his fun-loving mother, Virginia, remarried, Clinton had an uneasy relationship with his alcoholic and abusive step-father Roger Clinton. This affected Clinton too - probably much more so than he let on with friends as he would talk about his biological father's death buy kept fairly mum about Roger Clinton and his excesses.
From boyhood, Clinton alternately attracted and repelled people. Many people were drawn into his orbit by his charm and charisma. Others were put off by his glad-handing and apparent deviousness. Maraniss traces these qualities through Clinton's youth in Hope and then Hot Springs, his high school years, his college years at Georgetown, then Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and then Yale Law School, and then throughout his rise in Arkansas politics. One quality that Maraniss notes but does not dwell upon is the penchant that Clinton had (and probably still has) for distancing himself from someone once that person is no longer of much use to him. This is especially true when Clinton was a young governor in Arkansas, willing to sacrifice staff members in order to push blame for something off of himself and onto them. I remember this trait coming up while I was reading Dan Balz's book about the 2008 presidential primaries and election, when he was describing Bill's forlorn efforts to help Hillary try to win the Democratic nomination. It is just something that stuck out to me from my reading that book, and Maraniss happened to hit on the same trait.
This is an excellent, non-partisan look at the rise of Bill Clinton (and Hillary as well). Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Clintons, presidential biographies, or Arkansas politics.
Grade: A
January 1, 2011
I really tore through this, it was fascinating and readable and I highly recommend it. It really seems like Bill was shooting for the presidency from about age twelve. He seems to have been sorta like Lyndon Johnson; from what I gathered from reading this and a bio of LBJ, both of these guys were born to be politicians, always working the room and keeping tabs on people and figuring out how they are going to run the next campaign. One bonus about this book is that it also serves as a partial biography of Hillary (though obviously there isn't as much about her as there is about Bill). This was written in the mid 90s, and Maraniss writes several times about how people thought Hillary could have had just as successful a political career as Bill, and how she was a better law professor and maybe even a better student, but she sacrificed some independence and moved to Arkansas and attached herself to him. Of course today we know that she would become Senator Clinton and Secretary of State Clinton and almost President Clinton herself, but back then she seemed to have made the decision that it would be all about Bill and his rise.
January 14, 2019
https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2019...
David Maraniss’s “First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton” was published in 1995 and remains one of the most popular biographies of Clinton. Maraniss is an author and journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1993; he was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996, 2002 and 2004. Among his other books are biographies of Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente and Vince Lombardi.
Written during the early years of the Clinton presidency, this 464-page biography covers his first forty-five years (to his announcement he was running for president). Coverage is generally vivid and thorough, but Maraniss warns readers to expect relatively little coverage of the Whitewater controversy and Clinton’s personal indiscretions. Nevertheless, one need not look very hard to see the shadows of his numerous former girlfriends and casual flings scattered throughout the narrative.
Much of the book is based on Maraniss’s reporting during Clinton’s presidential campaign (for which he received the Pulitzer). But while neither Bill nor Hillary were interviewed for the book, Maraniss did speak with nearly four-hundred of Clinton’s friends and colleagues who provided a robust collection of diaries, letters and oral histories. It is hard to imagine any future Clinton biographer unearthing a comparable cache of new material.
Given his subject’s polarizing personality, Maraniss demonstrates remarkable objectivity and balance. And despite prescient foreshadowing by several of Clinton’s childhood acquaintances, the image of him which emerges from these pages is not one of obvious presidential timber. Instead, Maraniss’s portrait incorporates a complex and contradictory combination of characteristics: intelligence, extroversion, compassion and a tireless energy but also amorality, extreme duplicity, an odd indolence…and irrepressible ambition.
Although the book is essentially a classic presidential biography, it represents the confluence of traditional biography, political biography and character analysis. Almost every major event in his early life is well-covered, wonderfully described and keenly analyzed. Background and context are rarely forgotten and only occasionally does the reader find him- or herself so close to the action that the “big picture” becomes hazy.
The best aspect of the biography is probably its coverage of Clinton’s first three decades – the years preceding his political career in Arkansas. Readers get to meet an enormous number of Clinton’s influential friends, teachers and other mentors. And many of these figures receive colorful, captivating introductions of their own.
This book may well provide the best coverage of a subject’s pre-presidency I’ve read since LBJ (Caro) or JFK (Nigel Hamilton). The reader almost gets a sense of having walked the high school halls with Clinton, spied on him during bull sessions at Georgetown and journeyed with him across the Atlantic during his travels to Oxford.
Hillary is integrated into the narrative with a perceptive and revealing fifteen-page mini-biography which astutely captures her personality and attempts to decipher their mutual attraction. But Maraniss does not treat her as just any supporting character; given the nature and import of their “pragmatic partnership” Hillary appears regularly throughout the last half of the book.
Maraniss provides the most detailed and nuanced analysis of Clinton’s determined efforts to avoid the military draft that I’ve ever read. Like an accomplished prosecutor, Maraniss establishes the facts and then carefully dissects the mishmash of contradictory and dishonest statements Clinton later made regarding these events.
There is little about this biography which is not “first class.” But given the excellent roll-out which characters such as Robert Reich and Hillary Rodham receive, I would have expected a more compelling introduction to Dick Morris. And Clinton’s lengthy career of public service in Arkansas, which includes large stretches where nothing seems to happen, is comparatively dull and its timeline is somewhat murky.
Overall, however, David Maraniss’s 1995 “First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton” provides a wonderful introduction to this president-to-be. It is regrettable Maraniss has not yet followed up with a volume covering Clinton’s life in the White House. But anyone hoping to learn about Bill Clinton’s formative years needs look no further; “First in His Class” is the perfect place to start.
Overall rating: 4½ stars
David Maraniss’s “First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton” was published in 1995 and remains one of the most popular biographies of Clinton. Maraniss is an author and journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1993; he was a Pulitzer finalist in 1996, 2002 and 2004. Among his other books are biographies of Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente and Vince Lombardi.
Written during the early years of the Clinton presidency, this 464-page biography covers his first forty-five years (to his announcement he was running for president). Coverage is generally vivid and thorough, but Maraniss warns readers to expect relatively little coverage of the Whitewater controversy and Clinton’s personal indiscretions. Nevertheless, one need not look very hard to see the shadows of his numerous former girlfriends and casual flings scattered throughout the narrative.
Much of the book is based on Maraniss’s reporting during Clinton’s presidential campaign (for which he received the Pulitzer). But while neither Bill nor Hillary were interviewed for the book, Maraniss did speak with nearly four-hundred of Clinton’s friends and colleagues who provided a robust collection of diaries, letters and oral histories. It is hard to imagine any future Clinton biographer unearthing a comparable cache of new material.
Given his subject’s polarizing personality, Maraniss demonstrates remarkable objectivity and balance. And despite prescient foreshadowing by several of Clinton’s childhood acquaintances, the image of him which emerges from these pages is not one of obvious presidential timber. Instead, Maraniss’s portrait incorporates a complex and contradictory combination of characteristics: intelligence, extroversion, compassion and a tireless energy but also amorality, extreme duplicity, an odd indolence…and irrepressible ambition.
Although the book is essentially a classic presidential biography, it represents the confluence of traditional biography, political biography and character analysis. Almost every major event in his early life is well-covered, wonderfully described and keenly analyzed. Background and context are rarely forgotten and only occasionally does the reader find him- or herself so close to the action that the “big picture” becomes hazy.
The best aspect of the biography is probably its coverage of Clinton’s first three decades – the years preceding his political career in Arkansas. Readers get to meet an enormous number of Clinton’s influential friends, teachers and other mentors. And many of these figures receive colorful, captivating introductions of their own.
This book may well provide the best coverage of a subject’s pre-presidency I’ve read since LBJ (Caro) or JFK (Nigel Hamilton). The reader almost gets a sense of having walked the high school halls with Clinton, spied on him during bull sessions at Georgetown and journeyed with him across the Atlantic during his travels to Oxford.
Hillary is integrated into the narrative with a perceptive and revealing fifteen-page mini-biography which astutely captures her personality and attempts to decipher their mutual attraction. But Maraniss does not treat her as just any supporting character; given the nature and import of their “pragmatic partnership” Hillary appears regularly throughout the last half of the book.
Maraniss provides the most detailed and nuanced analysis of Clinton’s determined efforts to avoid the military draft that I’ve ever read. Like an accomplished prosecutor, Maraniss establishes the facts and then carefully dissects the mishmash of contradictory and dishonest statements Clinton later made regarding these events.
There is little about this biography which is not “first class.” But given the excellent roll-out which characters such as Robert Reich and Hillary Rodham receive, I would have expected a more compelling introduction to Dick Morris. And Clinton’s lengthy career of public service in Arkansas, which includes large stretches where nothing seems to happen, is comparatively dull and its timeline is somewhat murky.
Overall, however, David Maraniss’s 1995 “First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton” provides a wonderful introduction to this president-to-be. It is regrettable Maraniss has not yet followed up with a volume covering Clinton’s life in the White House. But anyone hoping to learn about Bill Clinton’s formative years needs look no further; “First in His Class” is the perfect place to start.
Overall rating: 4½ stars
July 17, 2025
2020 was many things: masks, sanitizers, banana bread, and mass introspection. But for me, it was also the year I slipped into the bloodstream of American ambition, courtesy of David Maraniss and his magisterial biography of Bill Clinton—First in His Class.
Now, full disclosure: I’ve never been overly fascinated by the smooth-talking Southern lawyer type. But Clinton, as Maraniss sketches him, isn’t just a figure in a power suit—he’s a walking contradiction, a saga wrapped in charm and sealed with calculation.
And First in His Class is no hagiography. It’s a scalpel-wielding, 600-page journey through the psyche of a man who wanted—needed—to be the best, not just in his class but in the world.
Maraniss starts at the beginning—Hope, Arkansas, a name dripping with literary irony. Little Bill Clinton, raised by his larger-than-life mother Virginia Kelley, bears witness to chaos at home. There’s domestic abuse, there’s resilience, and there’s an early awareness that life is politics: you charm, you pivot, you survive. The trauma doesn’t break him—it becomes fuel. If you want to understand Clinton’s psychological depth, look no further than that volatile family kitchen. It's where diplomacy and duplicity were first learned.
What makes the book sing is Maraniss’s absolute refusal to flatten Clinton into a narrative cliché. He’s not just the “boy wonder,” nor the Southern Elvis of policy. He is shown in layers: the idealist with a scholarship to Oxford and a heart full of Kennedy-era dreams, and the pragmatist who never met a mirror he didn’t like.
His time at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale Law is given the full spotlight, but not in bullet-point form. These aren’t just academic pit stops; they’re crucibles. Clinton absorbs everything—people, ideologies, institutions—and simultaneously figures out how to outmaneuver them. He’s not just learning political science; he’s conducting a long rehearsal for power.
But here’s where Maraniss is masterful: he shows us the cost of this ambition.
Clinton is brilliant, magnetic, generous. And also… slippery. He will promise you the moon and then vanish at sunrise, likely off shaking someone else’s hand and giving them the same lunar guarantee. He’s loyal, until he isn’t. Faithful, until he isn’t. This isn’t editorializing—it’s forensic biography. Clinton the man is both exhilarating and exhausting. Maraniss gives us all of it, with the even hand of someone who knows that truth rarely aligns with morality.
And all this happens before Clinton even announces his presidential run. The book ends in 1991, just before the explosion of national fame, just before the saxophone on Arsenio Hall and the walk through the White House gates. And that’s what makes it so special: this isn’t about Clinton the president. It’s about Clinton the idea—how he was made, molded, and maddened long before the campaign trail.
The real spine of First in His Class is how personal choices shape public destiny. Clinton’s restlessness, his need to be loved, to be brilliant, to be admired—it all bubbles into his policies, his speeches, his flirtations with both greatness and scandal. It’s the story of how childhood ghosts walk into the Senate chamber and stand beside you during State of the Union addresses.
Reading this in 2020, when leaders across the globe were tested in the furnace of crisis, was eye-opening. Clinton’s America—centrist, optimistic, morally murky—felt like another lifetime. But the making of Clinton? That felt eerily familiar. The ambition. The networking. The image-curation. The moments of ethical compromise sold as necessary trade-offs. You could draw a dotted line from the young Bill in Hot Springs to almost every millennial LinkedIn profile boasting of being a “change agent.”
Maraniss’s writing is elegant, restrained, and packed with detail. It’s less firework, more x-ray. He lets the material speak—through interviews, archives, and private letters. The tone? Neither adoring nor condemnatory. It's that rare thing: curious without being gullible.
For me, the highlight wasn’t the rise to governorhood or even the academic arc. It was the tension—between Clinton’s yearning to uplift people and his frequent inability to be emotionally truthful. He’s a man constantly trying to outrun himself, and in doing so, building a career of staggering highs and quietly devastating lows.
If you’re looking for a tale of simple greatness, look elsewhere. If you want a moral verdict? Not Maraniss’s game.
But if you want to witness how power is grown in petri dishes of charm, trauma, intellect, and ambition—this is your book.
By the end of First in His Class, I wasn’t sure whether I admired Clinton, pitied him, or simply saw him. And maybe that’s the point.
After all, politics isn’t about purity. It’s about people. Messy, magnificent people like William Jefferson Clinton.
Now, full disclosure: I’ve never been overly fascinated by the smooth-talking Southern lawyer type. But Clinton, as Maraniss sketches him, isn’t just a figure in a power suit—he’s a walking contradiction, a saga wrapped in charm and sealed with calculation.
And First in His Class is no hagiography. It’s a scalpel-wielding, 600-page journey through the psyche of a man who wanted—needed—to be the best, not just in his class but in the world.
Maraniss starts at the beginning—Hope, Arkansas, a name dripping with literary irony. Little Bill Clinton, raised by his larger-than-life mother Virginia Kelley, bears witness to chaos at home. There’s domestic abuse, there’s resilience, and there’s an early awareness that life is politics: you charm, you pivot, you survive. The trauma doesn’t break him—it becomes fuel. If you want to understand Clinton’s psychological depth, look no further than that volatile family kitchen. It's where diplomacy and duplicity were first learned.
What makes the book sing is Maraniss’s absolute refusal to flatten Clinton into a narrative cliché. He’s not just the “boy wonder,” nor the Southern Elvis of policy. He is shown in layers: the idealist with a scholarship to Oxford and a heart full of Kennedy-era dreams, and the pragmatist who never met a mirror he didn’t like.
His time at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale Law is given the full spotlight, but not in bullet-point form. These aren’t just academic pit stops; they’re crucibles. Clinton absorbs everything—people, ideologies, institutions—and simultaneously figures out how to outmaneuver them. He’s not just learning political science; he’s conducting a long rehearsal for power.
But here’s where Maraniss is masterful: he shows us the cost of this ambition.
Clinton is brilliant, magnetic, generous. And also… slippery. He will promise you the moon and then vanish at sunrise, likely off shaking someone else’s hand and giving them the same lunar guarantee. He’s loyal, until he isn’t. Faithful, until he isn’t. This isn’t editorializing—it’s forensic biography. Clinton the man is both exhilarating and exhausting. Maraniss gives us all of it, with the even hand of someone who knows that truth rarely aligns with morality.
And all this happens before Clinton even announces his presidential run. The book ends in 1991, just before the explosion of national fame, just before the saxophone on Arsenio Hall and the walk through the White House gates. And that’s what makes it so special: this isn’t about Clinton the president. It’s about Clinton the idea—how he was made, molded, and maddened long before the campaign trail.
The real spine of First in His Class is how personal choices shape public destiny. Clinton’s restlessness, his need to be loved, to be brilliant, to be admired—it all bubbles into his policies, his speeches, his flirtations with both greatness and scandal. It’s the story of how childhood ghosts walk into the Senate chamber and stand beside you during State of the Union addresses.
Reading this in 2020, when leaders across the globe were tested in the furnace of crisis, was eye-opening. Clinton’s America—centrist, optimistic, morally murky—felt like another lifetime. But the making of Clinton? That felt eerily familiar. The ambition. The networking. The image-curation. The moments of ethical compromise sold as necessary trade-offs. You could draw a dotted line from the young Bill in Hot Springs to almost every millennial LinkedIn profile boasting of being a “change agent.”
Maraniss’s writing is elegant, restrained, and packed with detail. It’s less firework, more x-ray. He lets the material speak—through interviews, archives, and private letters. The tone? Neither adoring nor condemnatory. It's that rare thing: curious without being gullible.
For me, the highlight wasn’t the rise to governorhood or even the academic arc. It was the tension—between Clinton’s yearning to uplift people and his frequent inability to be emotionally truthful. He’s a man constantly trying to outrun himself, and in doing so, building a career of staggering highs and quietly devastating lows.
If you’re looking for a tale of simple greatness, look elsewhere. If you want a moral verdict? Not Maraniss’s game.
But if you want to witness how power is grown in petri dishes of charm, trauma, intellect, and ambition—this is your book.
By the end of First in His Class, I wasn’t sure whether I admired Clinton, pitied him, or simply saw him. And maybe that’s the point.
After all, politics isn’t about purity. It’s about people. Messy, magnificent people like William Jefferson Clinton.
October 14, 2007
I find Bill Clinton endlessly fascinating. Much of my fascination comes from the character that emerges from this biography. From the first sentences, we're invited into a life that has no parallel in modern American history. His father dead, raised by a young free-spirited mother, Bill seems destined to follow the path of so many other poor southern boy. Raised amidst domestic violence (much more harrowing than reported), Bill Clinton develops into a bright, eager-to-please man on the make. The portrait is balanced -- his genuine care for policy and the "little guy" are presented alongside his reckless philandering. This book probes more deeply into this dichotomy than the president’s own (highly readable) memoir.
October 4, 2017
An excellent objective biography of Bill Clinton from the Pulitzer Prize Winning author David Maraniss. This biography was published in 1995 and covers Clinton's life up to his Presidential campaign announcement in 1991.
If you want a better understanding of the genesis of Bill Clinton as an intellectual and a politician, along with all the warts, then this is a fascinating book. I would break down the book as follows:
1. An early father-less childhood raised by a praise-heaping mother Virginia with problems and loving grandparents and then eventually a troubled and alcoholic step-father.
2. An ambitious, brilliant and politically motivated teenager elected as one of two Arkansas Boy's State Senators who then traveled to Washington D.C. where he dazzled congressmen and shook John F. Kennedy's hand.
3. A well liked Georgetown college student who stayed very active in politics and worked in the back office of congressional offices
4. Ongoing maneuvers and connections that allowed him to evade the Vietnam War draft. This section coincided with his time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and his travels throughout Europe including Russia.
5. Yale Law School student where he met Hillary.
6. An early law school faculty position in Fayatteville and then marriage to Hillary.
7. An attorney general position and first governorship and Hillary's involvement in commodities trading, Whitewater deals etc. Increasing concern about his sexual dalliances.
8. More campaigning and then highly popular terms as a second go-around governor. A rise to national prominence where he passed on a run for the presidency in 1988 due to the recent sexual allegations.
9. Polling and decision to run for President in 1992.
The writing in this book was highly prescient. Many of the self-inflicted problems that Bill and Hillary created later in their careers are foreshadowed in this book. Bill's sexual liaisons foreshadowed the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Bill's ability to wiggle out of the worst public scandals were already well honed before he entered law school. Hillary's public face and support of Bill despite dozens of allegations of marital misconduct and Bill's seeming inability to reform were front and center. Bill's lack of interest outside of politics and general boredom but unbridled energy, Hillary's financial insecurities, their joint desire to make huge impacts on the world were all there long before the Clinton Foundation. Also on display later in the book were many of Hillary's positive attributes; hard work, dogged determination, perseverance in spite of the double standards. But there were many prescient episodes of tone deafness on her part as well.
In the fall of 2016 during the last days of the campaign, I heard a lot of comments from those people that I grew up with in Michigan that there weren't any good candidates. As I made the drive along the backroads from the U.P. of Michigan to Colorado, I only saw one "Vote for Hillary" sign that I remember. Record numbers of people it seemed didn't like either candidate but in the rural areas that I drove through it was far worse for Hillary. If you consider Bill and Hillary as a package as many Americans do, then I think this book at least hints at some of these feelings that have been there for decades, rightly or wrongly.
If you want a better understanding of the genesis of Bill Clinton as an intellectual and a politician, along with all the warts, then this is a fascinating book. I would break down the book as follows:
1. An early father-less childhood raised by a praise-heaping mother Virginia with problems and loving grandparents and then eventually a troubled and alcoholic step-father.
2. An ambitious, brilliant and politically motivated teenager elected as one of two Arkansas Boy's State Senators who then traveled to Washington D.C. where he dazzled congressmen and shook John F. Kennedy's hand.
3. A well liked Georgetown college student who stayed very active in politics and worked in the back office of congressional offices
4. Ongoing maneuvers and connections that allowed him to evade the Vietnam War draft. This section coincided with his time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and his travels throughout Europe including Russia.
5. Yale Law School student where he met Hillary.
6. An early law school faculty position in Fayatteville and then marriage to Hillary.
7. An attorney general position and first governorship and Hillary's involvement in commodities trading, Whitewater deals etc. Increasing concern about his sexual dalliances.
8. More campaigning and then highly popular terms as a second go-around governor. A rise to national prominence where he passed on a run for the presidency in 1988 due to the recent sexual allegations.
9. Polling and decision to run for President in 1992.
The writing in this book was highly prescient. Many of the self-inflicted problems that Bill and Hillary created later in their careers are foreshadowed in this book. Bill's sexual liaisons foreshadowed the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Bill's ability to wiggle out of the worst public scandals were already well honed before he entered law school. Hillary's public face and support of Bill despite dozens of allegations of marital misconduct and Bill's seeming inability to reform were front and center. Bill's lack of interest outside of politics and general boredom but unbridled energy, Hillary's financial insecurities, their joint desire to make huge impacts on the world were all there long before the Clinton Foundation. Also on display later in the book were many of Hillary's positive attributes; hard work, dogged determination, perseverance in spite of the double standards. But there were many prescient episodes of tone deafness on her part as well.
In the fall of 2016 during the last days of the campaign, I heard a lot of comments from those people that I grew up with in Michigan that there weren't any good candidates. As I made the drive along the backroads from the U.P. of Michigan to Colorado, I only saw one "Vote for Hillary" sign that I remember. Record numbers of people it seemed didn't like either candidate but in the rural areas that I drove through it was far worse for Hillary. If you consider Bill and Hillary as a package as many Americans do, then I think this book at least hints at some of these feelings that have been there for decades, rightly or wrongly.
October 30, 2018
Love him or hate him, there's no denying that the Bill Clinton story could only happen in America. This was a very fairly written biography that doesn't shy away from any of Clinton's flaws but also doesn't dwell on them to the point of hysteria like so many other books on this subject. Some of the big take aways are that he essentially had his eye on the white house since middle school and would often make decisions, very early in his life, based on if it hurt his electabilty or not. That's a strange way for a kid to think. Another thing is that losing a parent in adolescence jacks you up.
February 18, 2018
When I purchased Maraniss’ biography, I didn’t realize that it did not cover President Bill Clinton’s tenure in office as 42nd President of the United States. This lengthy biography (464 pages) takes the reader to the point in Clinton’s life where, as governor of Arkansas, he makes his momentous announcement that he will run for President in 1992. William Jefferson Blythe was born in Hope Arkansas in 1946. Blythe never met his biological father who was killed in a car accident before he was born. His mother soon remarried a hard-drinking, car dealer, Roger Clinton. Clinton never adopted his stepson, however years later Bill legally changed his name to show solidarity with his younger step brother, Roger Clinton. Bill did well in high school academics, and excelled as a saxophone player in the school band. One of his crowning moments was when he met and shook the hand of John F. Kennedy as a 17 year-old delegate to the American League Boy’s Nation. Clinton subsequently attended Georgetown University, where the author noted he was “first in his class in terms of political will and skill.” Clinton went on to secure a Rhode’s scholarship allowing him to study two years at Oxford College in England. These were also the tumultuous Vietnam War years. Being strongly against the war, Clinton managed to avoid the draft by deftly maneuvering between a purported graduate ROTC program and a high draft lottery number. After Oxford, Clinton returned to the States to complete Yale law school. At Yale he met Hillary Rodham, who was his intellectual match and complemented Clinton in political shrewdness. While Clinton excelled at story telling and gregariousness, Rodham was financially astute and disciplined. Hillary married Bill Clinton with “open eyes” regarding Bill’s notorious philandering, however they were both committed to a political partnership that would benefit them. Clinton became the multi-term governor of Arkansas on a platform of “jobs creation, education reform, and an overhaul of the welfare system.” This platform would service him well in his upcoming campaign against President George Bush. This was a good “early life” biography, however I felt the author was perhaps a little too lenient on Clinton’s weaknesses, especially his philandering tendencies. Clinton was no less immoral than previous Presidents (especially Kennedy and Johnson), however the author failed to develop these tendencies in the same thorough manner as other biographers might have done. Otherwise, this was an insightful character study of a soon-to-be President.
November 29, 2025
Bill Clinton is portrayed in an even-handed way in this excellent and insightful book. I loved every page of this biography and I've read it, and referred to it, many times over the years since it was first published.
What struck me was, from an early age, he had the ability to interact with anyone from anywhere, whether the person he greeted was a peer, or someone down on their luck, or an owner of local business, or a college classmate from a more "sophisticated" upbringing.
Bill Clinton never met a stranger in his life -- and this skill followed him all the way to Washington DC. I recall him campaigning and speaking with US Citizens in the rust belt; I recall his meetings (when President) with world leaders like German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; he could speak the language of an over burdened urban single mother just scraping by; or he could chat up the Queen of England. Bill Clinton was larger than life in person, he drew you in, and those who spoke with him felt as if they and Clinton were the only two people in the room.
And he was smart. Georgetown; Rhodes Scholar; Yale law school. Not bad for a local kid from Arkansas who grew up in a broken home anchored by a strong mamma.
Bill Clinton had his faults -- we know all about those. Admirably, this book deals honestly with the good and the bad, the genius and the boneheaded good ol' boy, the statesman and the skirt-chaser.
Oh, and he talked politics, gossip, and public policy while playing cards (Hearts) late into the night. I'm a night owl too.
5 Stars
What struck me was, from an early age, he had the ability to interact with anyone from anywhere, whether the person he greeted was a peer, or someone down on their luck, or an owner of local business, or a college classmate from a more "sophisticated" upbringing.
Bill Clinton never met a stranger in his life -- and this skill followed him all the way to Washington DC. I recall him campaigning and speaking with US Citizens in the rust belt; I recall his meetings (when President) with world leaders like German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; he could speak the language of an over burdened urban single mother just scraping by; or he could chat up the Queen of England. Bill Clinton was larger than life in person, he drew you in, and those who spoke with him felt as if they and Clinton were the only two people in the room.
And he was smart. Georgetown; Rhodes Scholar; Yale law school. Not bad for a local kid from Arkansas who grew up in a broken home anchored by a strong mamma.
Bill Clinton had his faults -- we know all about those. Admirably, this book deals honestly with the good and the bad, the genius and the boneheaded good ol' boy, the statesman and the skirt-chaser.
Oh, and he talked politics, gossip, and public policy while playing cards (Hearts) late into the night. I'm a night owl too.
5 Stars
September 17, 2024
It’s a rarity to find a biography that reads like a novel, but Maraniss comes as close to that as you ever are going to. I’m not sure if it was the subject matter, or the firsthand accounts, or the effortless narration (probably all three), but First In His Class is inherently readable, with all the dramatic tension and highs and lows of a gripping story, with a compelling character, one who was full of contradictions — “considerate and calculating, easygoing and ambitious, mediator and predator.”
“With Bill CLinton, it is often tempting, but usually misleading, to try to separate the good from the bad, to say that the part of him that is indecisive, too eager to please and prone to deception, is more revealing of the inner man than the part of him that is indefatigable, intelligent, empathetic, and self-deprecating. They co-exist.”
Starting with Clinton’s memorable experience shaking the hand of JFK at Boys Nation, the book presents us with a boy eager to achieve the eight of the political world, carried by his boyish energy and ambition.
We’re then brought back in time to Clinton’s humble beginnings, born to a single mother whose husband died three months before Bill was born, and then being raised between Hope and Hot Springs, in the presence of a violent drunk, his stepfather Roger Clinton.
A talented student, who never shied away from his Southern heritage, he went to Georgetown to get to the center of the political universe: “The Georgetown years established that Clinton was first in his class in terms of political will and skill, and yet people could sometimes tire of him.”
Running for various student government posts and working for his Arkansas senator, Sen. Fulbright, whose critical views of the Vietnam War helped shape Clinton’s own: “His opposition remained a conviction, not activist, rooted in the documents he read at the foreign relations committee and in the arguments of Chairman Fulbright.”
His raw academic and political talent eventually landed him a Rhodes Scholarship, which sent him to Oxford and opened up a whole new world of international perspectives, while surroinding himself with equally ambitious classmates. Still, despite the antiwar fervor that swept the country and Oxford, Clinton stayed on relative moderate ground, while wrestling tirelessly over his draft status back in the States.
As students ceaselessly debating the motives and morals of the war, and how they would each dodge their draft numbers, a melancholy spread over Clinton, one that was especially potent given Clinton’s political aspirations.
He didn’t want to dodge the draft, given how that would make him look as a candidate, but he also didn’t want to fight in a war in which he was morally opposed: “His friends knew that he had invested too much time, hope, and ambition in his political future to abandon it by resisting… he believed in rules and he succeeded with them.”
That torment eventually led to countless phone calls and conversations, of allies back home pulling strings to eventually get him into an ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School, a situation that would defer his draft, but also lock him into a law school he had no interest in.
Still, Clinton managed to avoid the draft and avoid going to law school, returning to Oxford for a second year after the draft number system was established, and Clinton pulled a high number, and after Clinton then reentered the draft — a somewhat messy affair that would come back to harm him later, as opponents called him a draft dodger. The whole affair showed how Clinton “played the draft like a chess player and withdrew his deferment only when he thought it was safe to do so.”
Clinton continued to surround himself with the brightest of his generation when he entered Yale Law School, which “answered his every need: political, academic, social, and personal.” He worked on another senate race, this one for Connecticut and learn more about the faction of party politics, notably how to hold together competing forces in the Democratic Party, and also how to champion social change without alienating the vast American middle class.
Yale was also where he met Hillary Rodham, his intellectual equal if vastly different in personality and makeup: “Her focused intellect was also a perfect counterpoint to his restless, diffuse mind, and made her a superior law student… What set Rodham apart was her combination of social commitment and pragmatism.”
Put another way: “Clinton was soft and engaging, eager to charm the judge and jury and make witnesses feel comfortable, pouting when a ruling went the other way. Rodham was clear and all business.”
This relationship is central to much of the second half of the book, when, despite Clinton’s reputation as a lady chaser, and his well-documented affairs with many women, even when married, he maintained that Hillary was the only woman he wanted to marry.
“He might not be faithful, but together they could be faithful to their larger mission in life and achieve things beyond their individual reach.”
Though the book isn’t about Hillary, it does dedicate quite a few pages to her background, political ideology and evolution, and her tough decision to move to Arkansas and clash somewhat with the Southern culture, while forgoing opportunities in bigger cities. But staying by Clinton created its own opportunities.
“As a political advisor and pro bono public servant, she was devoting her time and intellect to the betterment of the state. Her motives always seemed practical — she was looking for solutions — but there was also a sanctimonious aspect to it that tended to blind her and her husband to the appearances of what they were doing. Clinton considered her the ethical pillar of their partnership.”
The Yale years were followed by working as Texas coordinators for McGovern’s failed presidential campaign, showcasing Clinton’s ability again to read personalities and adapt depending on the personalities of the people he was dealing with and establishing a network to enlarge his own political base.
That was followed by a homecoming to Arknsas, teaching law at the University of Arkansas, and whose laidback, easygoing style made him a student favorite. The state was always central to Clinton’s political rise and symbolic of the man’s powerful desire to move beyond his provincial roots (which probably explains his eagerness to run for Congress right after moving there).
After losing that race, Clinton became a governor in waiting of sorts: having made his name in his Congressional campaign, he was marked as a star on the rise, and soon became attorney general and eventually the country’s youngest governor in forty years.
This led to an overly ambitious first term of governor, of a kid in a candy store who wanted to do it all, from creating new departments in energy and economic development to revamping the rural healthcare system to reorganizing school districts to reordering the education system.
It also led to one of his first political blunders: raising the annual car licensing fees to build and improve roads. And it made him enemies with some of the high-powered lobbying interests, including the timber lobby, who was clear-cutting lands across the state, posing an environmental problem, but also providing the state with a reliable economic engine.
It put him in an uncomfortable exposition: “He was fighting his own emotions related to ambition and expectations…. He often seemed to be doing things because they were what someone who might be president should do… And when the public started to turn against him, it left him at a loss.”
These blunders, along with his sometimes youthful arrogance and naivety, his friendship with President Carter, a fallout over a Cuban refugee fiasco, and a general feeling of “national unease and disarray,” set the stack against him for his reelection campaign. He lost, becoming the youngest former governor in the state’s history, and putting his political future in jeopardy for maybe the first time ever.
But that loss also fueled Clinton’s ultimate rise to the national stage. He learned the importance of negative advertising, and the need to fight back. He surrounded himself with a well-oiled political machine, consolidating his network and hiring political strategists to concoct a permanent campaign, in which he would always be promoting himself and using messaging grounded in extensive public opinion polls.
He learned to ground this permanent campaign in several components: turn to idealism; never rely on the press; and merge ends and means, strategy and philosophy. In other words, “his political personality was largely unchanged: he was still restless, eclectic, intellectually hungry, eager to please. But this time he had a survival plan.”
That led to a successful run of ten years as governor, and the power to give national speeches outside of the state, fundraising for larger aspirations.
Always in his career, Maraniss argues, Clinton was balancing two competing hourglasses: his mortality as a person and his mortality as a politician. The early deaths of his father and stepfather perhaps shaped this restless energy that drove him to the top of the political mountain. But beyond that, Clinton’s boundless ambition, combined with his ever-present awareness of higher office, created maybe the last old-school politician: One who rises through the ranks of Yale Law, to Attorney General, to Governor, to President.
He was so meticulous about this ladder that he sometimes lost sight of himself: When voters turned against him, he — who was Arkansas’s wonder boy and whose chameleon-like personality helped win friends in every corner of the state — was at a loss.
And at the same time, for someone with so much boundless energy and ambition, he probably could never have accomplished this without someone like Hillary in his life, who gave him perseverance and optimism, even during the toughest political battles.
First In His Class is a gripping narrative of a complicated leader, one whose ambitious rise to power is equally compromised by his flaws as a person. The book doesn’t cover his presidency at all, but shows how Clinton’s background and personality shaped the years that followed. One of the best presidential biographies I’ve ever read.
“With Bill CLinton, it is often tempting, but usually misleading, to try to separate the good from the bad, to say that the part of him that is indecisive, too eager to please and prone to deception, is more revealing of the inner man than the part of him that is indefatigable, intelligent, empathetic, and self-deprecating. They co-exist.”
Starting with Clinton’s memorable experience shaking the hand of JFK at Boys Nation, the book presents us with a boy eager to achieve the eight of the political world, carried by his boyish energy and ambition.
We’re then brought back in time to Clinton’s humble beginnings, born to a single mother whose husband died three months before Bill was born, and then being raised between Hope and Hot Springs, in the presence of a violent drunk, his stepfather Roger Clinton.
A talented student, who never shied away from his Southern heritage, he went to Georgetown to get to the center of the political universe: “The Georgetown years established that Clinton was first in his class in terms of political will and skill, and yet people could sometimes tire of him.”
Running for various student government posts and working for his Arkansas senator, Sen. Fulbright, whose critical views of the Vietnam War helped shape Clinton’s own: “His opposition remained a conviction, not activist, rooted in the documents he read at the foreign relations committee and in the arguments of Chairman Fulbright.”
His raw academic and political talent eventually landed him a Rhodes Scholarship, which sent him to Oxford and opened up a whole new world of international perspectives, while surroinding himself with equally ambitious classmates. Still, despite the antiwar fervor that swept the country and Oxford, Clinton stayed on relative moderate ground, while wrestling tirelessly over his draft status back in the States.
As students ceaselessly debating the motives and morals of the war, and how they would each dodge their draft numbers, a melancholy spread over Clinton, one that was especially potent given Clinton’s political aspirations.
He didn’t want to dodge the draft, given how that would make him look as a candidate, but he also didn’t want to fight in a war in which he was morally opposed: “His friends knew that he had invested too much time, hope, and ambition in his political future to abandon it by resisting… he believed in rules and he succeeded with them.”
That torment eventually led to countless phone calls and conversations, of allies back home pulling strings to eventually get him into an ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School, a situation that would defer his draft, but also lock him into a law school he had no interest in.
Still, Clinton managed to avoid the draft and avoid going to law school, returning to Oxford for a second year after the draft number system was established, and Clinton pulled a high number, and after Clinton then reentered the draft — a somewhat messy affair that would come back to harm him later, as opponents called him a draft dodger. The whole affair showed how Clinton “played the draft like a chess player and withdrew his deferment only when he thought it was safe to do so.”
Clinton continued to surround himself with the brightest of his generation when he entered Yale Law School, which “answered his every need: political, academic, social, and personal.” He worked on another senate race, this one for Connecticut and learn more about the faction of party politics, notably how to hold together competing forces in the Democratic Party, and also how to champion social change without alienating the vast American middle class.
Yale was also where he met Hillary Rodham, his intellectual equal if vastly different in personality and makeup: “Her focused intellect was also a perfect counterpoint to his restless, diffuse mind, and made her a superior law student… What set Rodham apart was her combination of social commitment and pragmatism.”
Put another way: “Clinton was soft and engaging, eager to charm the judge and jury and make witnesses feel comfortable, pouting when a ruling went the other way. Rodham was clear and all business.”
This relationship is central to much of the second half of the book, when, despite Clinton’s reputation as a lady chaser, and his well-documented affairs with many women, even when married, he maintained that Hillary was the only woman he wanted to marry.
“He might not be faithful, but together they could be faithful to their larger mission in life and achieve things beyond their individual reach.”
Though the book isn’t about Hillary, it does dedicate quite a few pages to her background, political ideology and evolution, and her tough decision to move to Arkansas and clash somewhat with the Southern culture, while forgoing opportunities in bigger cities. But staying by Clinton created its own opportunities.
“As a political advisor and pro bono public servant, she was devoting her time and intellect to the betterment of the state. Her motives always seemed practical — she was looking for solutions — but there was also a sanctimonious aspect to it that tended to blind her and her husband to the appearances of what they were doing. Clinton considered her the ethical pillar of their partnership.”
The Yale years were followed by working as Texas coordinators for McGovern’s failed presidential campaign, showcasing Clinton’s ability again to read personalities and adapt depending on the personalities of the people he was dealing with and establishing a network to enlarge his own political base.
That was followed by a homecoming to Arknsas, teaching law at the University of Arkansas, and whose laidback, easygoing style made him a student favorite. The state was always central to Clinton’s political rise and symbolic of the man’s powerful desire to move beyond his provincial roots (which probably explains his eagerness to run for Congress right after moving there).
After losing that race, Clinton became a governor in waiting of sorts: having made his name in his Congressional campaign, he was marked as a star on the rise, and soon became attorney general and eventually the country’s youngest governor in forty years.
This led to an overly ambitious first term of governor, of a kid in a candy store who wanted to do it all, from creating new departments in energy and economic development to revamping the rural healthcare system to reorganizing school districts to reordering the education system.
It also led to one of his first political blunders: raising the annual car licensing fees to build and improve roads. And it made him enemies with some of the high-powered lobbying interests, including the timber lobby, who was clear-cutting lands across the state, posing an environmental problem, but also providing the state with a reliable economic engine.
It put him in an uncomfortable exposition: “He was fighting his own emotions related to ambition and expectations…. He often seemed to be doing things because they were what someone who might be president should do… And when the public started to turn against him, it left him at a loss.”
These blunders, along with his sometimes youthful arrogance and naivety, his friendship with President Carter, a fallout over a Cuban refugee fiasco, and a general feeling of “national unease and disarray,” set the stack against him for his reelection campaign. He lost, becoming the youngest former governor in the state’s history, and putting his political future in jeopardy for maybe the first time ever.
But that loss also fueled Clinton’s ultimate rise to the national stage. He learned the importance of negative advertising, and the need to fight back. He surrounded himself with a well-oiled political machine, consolidating his network and hiring political strategists to concoct a permanent campaign, in which he would always be promoting himself and using messaging grounded in extensive public opinion polls.
He learned to ground this permanent campaign in several components: turn to idealism; never rely on the press; and merge ends and means, strategy and philosophy. In other words, “his political personality was largely unchanged: he was still restless, eclectic, intellectually hungry, eager to please. But this time he had a survival plan.”
That led to a successful run of ten years as governor, and the power to give national speeches outside of the state, fundraising for larger aspirations.
Always in his career, Maraniss argues, Clinton was balancing two competing hourglasses: his mortality as a person and his mortality as a politician. The early deaths of his father and stepfather perhaps shaped this restless energy that drove him to the top of the political mountain. But beyond that, Clinton’s boundless ambition, combined with his ever-present awareness of higher office, created maybe the last old-school politician: One who rises through the ranks of Yale Law, to Attorney General, to Governor, to President.
He was so meticulous about this ladder that he sometimes lost sight of himself: When voters turned against him, he — who was Arkansas’s wonder boy and whose chameleon-like personality helped win friends in every corner of the state — was at a loss.
And at the same time, for someone with so much boundless energy and ambition, he probably could never have accomplished this without someone like Hillary in his life, who gave him perseverance and optimism, even during the toughest political battles.
First In His Class is a gripping narrative of a complicated leader, one whose ambitious rise to power is equally compromised by his flaws as a person. The book doesn’t cover his presidency at all, but shows how Clinton’s background and personality shaped the years that followed. One of the best presidential biographies I’ve ever read.
January 27, 2016
Clinton's life up to running for president: here, you have the Rhodes scholar, the law student, law teacher, his first campaigns, and other chapters. Hillary also gets good coverage, especially in contrast with Bill (Hillary is the harder, financial minded one, while Bill is portrayed as softer). This is also about the Baby Boomer generation: that's the "class" in the title, so there is a focus on Clinton's life as representative of the challenges faced by the generation that was drafted to go to Vietnam.
March 17, 2008
Okay, the only reason this is on here is that Nate made me read it-in the 7th grade!!-b/c he didn't want to waste his time on it if it wasn't any good. So I did; I hauled it to Study Hall every day. It's now a running family joke.
November 1, 2020
Maraniss's First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton is an interesting read of Clinton's youth through to his announcement to run for president. If you want to know about all of the bodies that Clinton stuffed into closets that became the skeletons that haunted him in his presidency, then this is a must read. Maraniss details how Clinton became the gregarious, ambitious, highly intelligent man with his definite flaws. Raise by a doting mother and grandmother who continually told him that he would be president, someone very special, he believed it and spent the first four decades of his life with seemingly every choice pointed to that goal. He presented himself as the Every Man from Arkansas, though with this education at Georgetown, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and Yale, he was anything but. As a consummate politician, he was widely traveled in his youth and developed contacts (and a system of keeping track of them) that he called upon frequently, for moral support and money, though he never seemed to have any money himself. He managed often to show up uninvited, often for a meal and a shower.
Was he a draft dodger? Maraniss spends much time illustrating the angst Clinton felt about serving in a very unpopular war, considering that he knew that actually refusing to serve would hurt him politically in the future. He had already started at Oxford and that staved things off for one year. Then he made arrangements to attend Arkansas University Law School and participate in the ROTC to keep him deferred. This required a special dispensation and letters were exchanged though he managed to destroy them (or so he thought). He never showed up on campus, but returned to Oxford for a second year. Eventually the draft system developed a lottery system based on birthdate and his number was high enough to keep him out. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
Did he use drugs? "I didn't inhale" was probably true, though not likely from lack of trying. Clinton never could get the hang of smoking, tobacco or marijuana.
The Whitewater Development scheme is mentioned, though it failed to pan out, and I have yet to understand what all of the fuss was about.
Was Clinton a womanizer? Frankly, yes. He was considering running for President at the time when Gary Hart's campaign imploded through his challenge to follow him to prove that he was not having affairs. Which was really quite stupid considering that he was. Clinton's close friends and political advisors were very concerned that Clinton would have the same fate. He covered it up by admitting that he and Hillary were having difficulties, but that their marriage was strong and they were committed to each other.
And then we come to Hillary. Hillary and Bill were both ambitious and saw in each other a companion who would help them achieve their political goals. Their relationship was much like FDR and Eleanor's, though without the painful discovery of infidelity. Hillary entered the relationship with her eyes wide open.
Bill Clinton could, and would talk with anyone about anything. He was a comfortable with hardworking farmers as he was with senators on Capital Hill. He was elected as Governor of Arkansas, the youngest governor ever anywhere, and miserable failed because of youthful arrogance and his disenfranchising of the people of Arkansas. They resoundingly booted him out after one term, and that is when Clinton began his "continual campaigning" that put him back in the Governor's Mansion and eventually on its steps proudly declaring that he was running for the office of the President of the United States.
Fortunately, John Harris picks up the story in that exact spot in The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House.
Was he a draft dodger? Maraniss spends much time illustrating the angst Clinton felt about serving in a very unpopular war, considering that he knew that actually refusing to serve would hurt him politically in the future. He had already started at Oxford and that staved things off for one year. Then he made arrangements to attend Arkansas University Law School and participate in the ROTC to keep him deferred. This required a special dispensation and letters were exchanged though he managed to destroy them (or so he thought). He never showed up on campus, but returned to Oxford for a second year. Eventually the draft system developed a lottery system based on birthdate and his number was high enough to keep him out. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
Did he use drugs? "I didn't inhale" was probably true, though not likely from lack of trying. Clinton never could get the hang of smoking, tobacco or marijuana.
The Whitewater Development scheme is mentioned, though it failed to pan out, and I have yet to understand what all of the fuss was about.
Was Clinton a womanizer? Frankly, yes. He was considering running for President at the time when Gary Hart's campaign imploded through his challenge to follow him to prove that he was not having affairs. Which was really quite stupid considering that he was. Clinton's close friends and political advisors were very concerned that Clinton would have the same fate. He covered it up by admitting that he and Hillary were having difficulties, but that their marriage was strong and they were committed to each other.
And then we come to Hillary. Hillary and Bill were both ambitious and saw in each other a companion who would help them achieve their political goals. Their relationship was much like FDR and Eleanor's, though without the painful discovery of infidelity. Hillary entered the relationship with her eyes wide open.
Bill Clinton could, and would talk with anyone about anything. He was a comfortable with hardworking farmers as he was with senators on Capital Hill. He was elected as Governor of Arkansas, the youngest governor ever anywhere, and miserable failed because of youthful arrogance and his disenfranchising of the people of Arkansas. They resoundingly booted him out after one term, and that is when Clinton began his "continual campaigning" that put him back in the Governor's Mansion and eventually on its steps proudly declaring that he was running for the office of the President of the United States.
Fortunately, John Harris picks up the story in that exact spot in The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House.
January 3, 2026
This book was published in 1995 during the third year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the biography ends with Clinton’s announcement that he is running for president on October 3, 1991. Thus, the biography does not include anything that occurred after 1991.
Still, this is an excellent biography, because you see that Bill Clinton never changed. From childhood to the present, Bill Clinton has been enormously gifted and enormously flawed. He was always extremely intelligent, a clear and often inspiring speaker, and very empathetic, gregarious, and charming. He was also a serial womanizer and never told the whole truth about anything!
Maraniss is a very good writer. He did a lot of research for this book, and his comments about Clinton are very insightful.
I recently reviewed Robert Caro’s “The Path to Power”, the first volume in his series on President Lyndon Johnson. I described LBJ as larger than life with assets and liabilities that were huge. I would describe Bill Clinton the exact same way.
Still, this is an excellent biography, because you see that Bill Clinton never changed. From childhood to the present, Bill Clinton has been enormously gifted and enormously flawed. He was always extremely intelligent, a clear and often inspiring speaker, and very empathetic, gregarious, and charming. He was also a serial womanizer and never told the whole truth about anything!
Maraniss is a very good writer. He did a lot of research for this book, and his comments about Clinton are very insightful.
I recently reviewed Robert Caro’s “The Path to Power”, the first volume in his series on President Lyndon Johnson. I described LBJ as larger than life with assets and liabilities that were huge. I would describe Bill Clinton the exact same way.
January 18, 2008
This is probably still the definitive biography of Bill Clinton, although it ends its narrative at the beginning of his presidency.
This book chronicles Clinton's growing up in Arkansas, his attending Boy's State, band competitions and dating Arkansas beauty queens. Maraniss describes Clinton as a good student who was always involved in student government & band and who was a regular over-achiever.
This book also covers Clinton’s attendance at Georgetown, including his formative experiences, professors and running for office. It recounts his attendance at Oxford, Yale, his meeting Hillary Rodham, his avoidance of the Vietnam War and his European travels. It also discusses his working for Senator Fulbright and how he would bust out singing Elvis songs while working at the Capitol. One interesting insight comes by way of Marannis’s discussion of many of Clinton’s young contemporaries and how Clinton was a part of the "Class of ‘68" but was amongst a group who, while believing in dramatic change, felt it must be done within the existing system (rather than doing away with the system per se).
Some of the best parts of this book are about Clinton's younger days and it recounts his running for Congress, AG and Governor of Arkansas.
One of my favorite stories was (as I recall) of Clinton vetoing (or not vetoing) a bill as Governor. A certain person or interest group was not happy with the outcome and persuaded Clinton to change his mind. It was after hours and the bill had already been shoved under a door per procedure. So they got a coat hanger and got the bill back out from underneath the door and Clinton made the desired change.
.
This book chronicles Clinton's growing up in Arkansas, his attending Boy's State, band competitions and dating Arkansas beauty queens. Maraniss describes Clinton as a good student who was always involved in student government & band and who was a regular over-achiever.
This book also covers Clinton’s attendance at Georgetown, including his formative experiences, professors and running for office. It recounts his attendance at Oxford, Yale, his meeting Hillary Rodham, his avoidance of the Vietnam War and his European travels. It also discusses his working for Senator Fulbright and how he would bust out singing Elvis songs while working at the Capitol. One interesting insight comes by way of Marannis’s discussion of many of Clinton’s young contemporaries and how Clinton was a part of the "Class of ‘68" but was amongst a group who, while believing in dramatic change, felt it must be done within the existing system (rather than doing away with the system per se).
Some of the best parts of this book are about Clinton's younger days and it recounts his running for Congress, AG and Governor of Arkansas.
One of my favorite stories was (as I recall) of Clinton vetoing (or not vetoing) a bill as Governor. A certain person or interest group was not happy with the outcome and persuaded Clinton to change his mind. It was after hours and the bill had already been shoved under a door per procedure. So they got a coat hanger and got the bill back out from underneath the door and Clinton made the desired change.
.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2010
Maraniss documents, in rich detail, the genesis and life of a complex, gifted, and flawed individual. There is balance in his presentation. He portrays Clinton as extraordinarily gifted, with IQ and EQ, making him the perfect politician; Clinton demonstrates an amazing ability to connect with every person he meets and still be a policy wonk. Despite Clinton's amazing gifts leading to Oxford and Yale success, as well as his early life political conquests, the seeds of the most difficult chapters of his life are evident early. The author explores the origins and the evolution of trust issues, the darker side of a tendency to manipulate, and the womanizing.
With all of the gifts Clinton has and the time he comes of age, it is difficult not to think of Malcolm's "Outliers". There is a very real thread in Clinton's history of being in the right place, at the right time, even with an admission that he would make the most of those opportunities.
I would recommend this strongly to anyone who has interest in Clinton or the times in which he matured. My only complaint is that the timeline covered fails short of Clinton's presidency. I only hope that Maraniss will have a follow-on work, with more depth, than his easily panned "The Clinton Enigma".
With all of the gifts Clinton has and the time he comes of age, it is difficult not to think of Malcolm's "Outliers". There is a very real thread in Clinton's history of being in the right place, at the right time, even with an admission that he would make the most of those opportunities.
I would recommend this strongly to anyone who has interest in Clinton or the times in which he matured. My only complaint is that the timeline covered fails short of Clinton's presidency. I only hope that Maraniss will have a follow-on work, with more depth, than his easily panned "The Clinton Enigma".
May 16, 2011
After reading a biography of Obama, I started researching biographies on other Presidents. I downloaded several to my Kindle, and this is the first one I'm reading. While the writing is no where near the quality of that of David Remnick's in The Bridge, I am nevertheless fascinated. Since Clinton is only a two years older than me, the historical context is real and vivid. Since he grew up in the South as did my ex-husband, I can't help but notice parallels there as well. The writing is clunky, but the research seems thorough and I got quite a bit of what I was looking for--i.e. a peek at the boy, youth, man who became president. There were times when I felt hoodwinked by a smooth talker back when I voted for him to be president. There's no doubt he is a flawed human being as are we all. This begs the question: How do one's flaws inform one's actions as a political leader for better or worse.
Since this book only takes the reader to the moment when he announced his candidacy for presidency, I don't have the information that might answer this question with regard to Clinton. In my quest to learn more about presidents, I think I'll have to read another book on Clinton, this time one that focuses on his presidency.
Since this book only takes the reader to the moment when he announced his candidacy for presidency, I don't have the information that might answer this question with regard to Clinton. In my quest to learn more about presidents, I think I'll have to read another book on Clinton, this time one that focuses on his presidency.
October 18, 2011
In 1992, I was a college freshman voting for the first time. I initially supported Perot because he was from my hometown of Dallas (not a good reason I guess), but switched to Clinton after Perot dropped out for a few weeks. The 90s represent a most excellent time in my life and because Bill was president during that time I associate him with all of the things that made my 90s so good - Nirvana, three Super Bowl wins for the Cowboys, living out my dream of becoming a sportswriter, traveling abroad, meeting Lefty (the best dog I will ever have), and, at decade's end, meeting my wife. This book has nothing to do with that time in my life. It is not about the Clinton presidency, but about Clinton's life before he became president. Found it very interesting. Clinton is the quintessential political animal, which makes him deplorable, but at the same time, his keen intellect and lifelong interest in books and learning fascinate me.
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February 20, 2013This is a fascinating read and take on the Force that is Bill Clinton. The most interesting part of the book to me was a surprise: it was reliving the Vietnam years and their effect on Clinton and his peer group (to which I belong). Maraniss's recounting of the frustration we felt made me relive the entire rotten time--his narrative was a true and effective recounting of that time. The most surprising part of the book to me was that Clinton knew and advertised from such an early age that he intended to make a life of politics. His peers and contacts believed that he would go far, and many of them were by his side when he was President.
October 16, 2014
Read this one back in 2004.
Before reading this book, I thought nothing but ill of Bill. I was amazed by Clinton’s life: impressed by his early religion (Southern Baptist), envious of his his education and travels, and thoroughly astonished by his resiliency, personal and political. Maraniss actually has me thinking there are ways I need to be more like Bill Clinton, especially his attention to details of others’ lives. There's plenty more to say of Bill's life, and Maraniss does not get into the sordid stories. Even so, I loved this book.
Before reading this book, I thought nothing but ill of Bill. I was amazed by Clinton’s life: impressed by his early religion (Southern Baptist), envious of his his education and travels, and thoroughly astonished by his resiliency, personal and political. Maraniss actually has me thinking there are ways I need to be more like Bill Clinton, especially his attention to details of others’ lives. There's plenty more to say of Bill's life, and Maraniss does not get into the sordid stories. Even so, I loved this book.
August 13, 2013
A monumental "warts and all" study of a complicated subject. First in His Class is far superior to Maraniss' When Pride Still Mattered, perhaps because the author has a better command of politics than he does of football. It's slow going in many points, but ultimately quite revealing and intimate. I'm not a fan of these projects, and I rarely read them absent a host of recommendations from colleagues, but this work ranks among the best of its kind.
July 20, 2013
This was good. It complimented the Autobiography of Bill Clinton (My Life) I recently completed as part of my growing collection of bio's and auto-bio's of the Presidents.
However, spending 70 pages (or more!) on Clinton's draft dodging really bogged down the middle of the book.
It also, as a side note, made Hilary look like an even weaker person than she is known to be, as it discussed Bill's rampant cheating and womanizing.
However, spending 70 pages (or more!) on Clinton's draft dodging really bogged down the middle of the book.
It also, as a side note, made Hilary look like an even weaker person than she is known to be, as it discussed Bill's rampant cheating and womanizing.
November 19, 2011
Very well-written and researched regardless of what you think of the subject matter. Maraniss paints a remarkably unbiased picture of the future president. This book captures the years before the presidency but in many ways those are the most telling years of his life.
May 24, 2013
I enjoyed it- I frequently found myself wondering why he did the things he did- an intelligent man-albeit a lawyer- saying it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, in some ways this book clarifies the roots of his character
July 27, 2007
I think this is the definitive bio of President Bill Clinton. Meticulously research and balanced. Unapologetic, yet you can tell Manniss is impressed by Clinton.
Good read.
Good read.
December 11, 2007
Absolutely tremendous, insightful and most importantly, objective biography.
December 20, 2007
Regardless of political views, you can see he is very talented. I was impressed by his networking abilities.
April 17, 2008
Now I know more about Bill Clinton than ever possible, but pretty well-written.
June 20, 2008
Best bio of Bill Clinton that I have read so far. Mariniss gets inside the head of the charismatic, complex, brilliant and flawed man.
June 26, 2008
Interesting, but written before Monica. But if you want to know everything that made Bill, Bill (and Hill, too), this is a great start.
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