An admiring yet not fawning look at Clinton’s persuasive powers and use of the bully pulpit.
Clinton and his White House staff at work, seen from the perspective of his former director of speechwriting.
Waldman (Who Robbed America?, not reviewed) joined the Clinton campaign in the summer of 1992 and worked for him until the summer of 1999. During those years he helped draft nearly 2,000 speeches, including two inaugural and four state of the union addresses. His chronology touches lightly on the 1992 campaign (“a sleepless blur”) and the chaos of the transitional period, but moves into high gear with his assignment to work on the new President’s first inaugural address. Waldman, who focused on domestic issues and the international economy, describes the atmosphere of hope and optimism at the beginning of Clinton’s presidency and the ups and downs that followed: the administration’s success in passing NAFTA in 1993; the frustrating struggle for reform of welfare, health care, and campaign finance; the budget fights of 1995; Clinton’s comeback after the Democratic loss of Congress in 1996; and the administration’s determined efforts to attend to business in the face of scandal and impeachment. Waldman, who was only 32 when his White House stint began, was plainly awed at finding himself there (which gives his account a wide-eyed quality), and—since conversational exchanges are liberally reported—either he has a remarkable memory or he kept extensive notes. While this is a far more serious and informative view of the White House than television’s West Wing, it is equally filled with images of dedicated young men pulling all-nighters in the service of their chief. What distinguishes this account is the picture of Clinton at work with words—writing, editing, rewriting, searching for the right phrase—and then delivering those words or improvising others with assurance and style.
An admiring yet not fawning look at Clinton’s persuasive powers and use of the bully pulpit.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-7432-0020-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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