Stock photo.

My Life

by Bill Clinton

In this much-anticipated presidential autobiography, the 42nd president of the United States reveals, for the first time and in his own words, how he sees his life and career. MY LIFE is a 900+-page work that is ambitious in scope, yet very conversational in tone. Clinton speaks fondly of his early years in Hope, Arkansas, crediting his mother and his stepfather (whose last name the former William Jefferson Blythe adopted) for setting him off on the right path. Yet he does not shave off the darker side, including the untimely death of his birth father in a ditch by the side of the road months before Bill was born. Clinton recalls, it seems, nearly every event in his political life, big and small, as well as every person, big and small, who ever worked with him--or against him--from Arkansas to the White House. There is a grand sweep to MY LIFE, and policy wonks and scandal mongers alike should find enough in here to please. Clinton reviews just about everything that was on his calendar, but he makes sure, also, to reflect on those events. He assesses his major accomplishments, which include his record on the economy and his intervention in Serbia. He also shares his regrets on both the health-care issue and his failed attempt to broker a final, enduring peace in the Middle East. What is new and of interest is his version of his administration's awareness of the terrorist threat, and his targeting of Osama bin Laden. The ever-present, steadying presence of Hillary and his love for both her and their daughter Chelsea come through loud and clear. As for the Lewinsky affair, he blames himself. ("I did it...because I could.") For his impeachment, he blames partisan politics and an overzealous and (in his view lawbreaking) Kenneth Starr. MY LIFE is a combination mea culpa, political speech, and attempt to set the record for history. And there is a sense that it was also an opportunity for a now-retired formerly busy man to review, in repose, a full life. In his epilogue, Clinton says, "I think it's a good story, and I've had a good time telling it"--and that comes through loud and clear. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.

Available editions of My Life

	9780739317099, Digital, Random House Audio, None currently available

	9781846575754, Digital, Random House AudioBooks, None currently available

	9781400030033, Paperback, Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2005 $3.00 (as new) Other copies of 9781400030033

	9780375414572, Hardcover, Knopf, 2004 $1.00 (Very Good ) Other copies of 9780375414572

	9780375435195, Hardcover, Random House Large Print, 2004 $1.00 (Good ) Other copies of 9780375435195

	9780739317068, Compact Disc, Random House, 2004 $6.13 (Very Good) Other copies of 9780739317068

Publisher Notes

President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public. It is the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written, and a testament to the positive impact on America and on the world of his work and his ideals.

Here is the life of a great national and international figure, revealed with all his talents and contradictions. Filled with fascinating moments and insights, it is told openly, directly, in President Clinton’s own completely recognizable voice.

From the Hardcover edition.

Media Reviews

"William Jefferson Clinton's MY LIFE is, by a generous measure, the richest American presidential autobiography--no other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years. Clinton had the good sense to couple great smarts with a solid education; he arrived in Washington in 1964 and has been the nation's--or perhaps the world's--No. 1 politics junkie ever since. And he can write--as Reagan, Ford, Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, to go no farther back, could not....But he's lonely, and in the quality of his loneliness lies much of his appeal. And he does have serious appeal. Nothing in this book becomes Clinton so much as his gentle, sympathetic treatment of his alcoholic, sometimes abusive stepfather, Roger Clinton, whose name he took and whom he calls Daddy...I happen to like long, smart, dense narratives and read MY LIFE straight through, happily. I may not know Bill Clinton any better than I did when I started, but I know recent history better, which surely can't hurt."

First Line

Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border at Texarkana.

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