Reviewed by Shel Desormeax
When former U.S. President Bill Clinton met his match in Kenneth Starr years ago as a result of a personally and professionally damaging dalliance with intern Monica Lewinsky, one could marvel over how people rallied around him. We’re not talking family, minister and Oval Office staff here; we mean folks who went way back with Bill Clinton, all the way back.
That sort of solidarity goes both ways, it would seem, and that’s probably what makes My Life pleasant: Bill Clinton has a long history with many people (he has made childhood friends and kept them, often working with them later in life) and he relishes what he has learned about them. His incredible memory (despite its manifestation in the form of often painful cliché) is something to envy, and his almost naïve optimism about people is touching and nearly astonishing, given the fact that he grew up in Hope, Arkansas, in the heyday of segregation and the fight for Civil Rights. He saw the very worst come from a lot of people, and still managed to believe that equality was always possible and that it was what most people really wanted in the end.
Few former Presidents (Truman, Hoover, Eisenhower, Johnson are among them) have actually penned what could be defined as memoirs (it is said that Clinton actually read all of the memoirs he could get his hands on before he began writing his own). More popular now is the trend seeing presidential candidates writing memoirs or autobiographies to accompany their campaigns, and first ladies have actually enjoyed more success as writers. Bill Clinton, as one of the more popular and (in)famous Western leaders, will likely see higher book sales than many of his predecessors
My Life is a detailed and affectionate look at Clinton’s lengthy and often painful schooling in the political arena, as well as a good and honest story. It’s filled with a candor rarely seen in such a book. What most people like, to this day, about Bill Clinton will be what readers of this book will most enjoy about it: his simple, conversational way of relating to people, all sorts of people. His tendency to look beyond human error, a tendency he has cultivated since childhood, is idealistic and inspiring, and a reminder that maybe more of us should extend the same courtesy to someone who may have tried harder than most to be a fair leader, and a good man to boot.
"There is nothing wrong with America that can not be cured by what is right about America.” - Bill Clinton
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