First in His Class; A Biography of Bill Clinton

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. First Touchstone Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Good. 512 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index, Inscribed by the author on free end page. Cover has some wear and soiling. Small tear at top of spine. Some edge soiling. David Maraniss (born 1949) is an American journalist and author, currently serving as an associate editor for The Washington Post. He received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1993 for his coverage of then-candidate Bill Clinton during the 1992 United States presidential election. Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss received an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the Spring commencement ceremony on May 16, 2014. Maraniss began his journalism career as a high school student in Madison, Wisconsin, where he covered antiwar protests and high school football for a local daily newspaper. He joined The Washington Post in 1977 and has served it in various capacities since. The Post assigned him the job of biographer for their coverage of 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. Inscribed to Peter Perl, a member of the senior management at The Washington Post. 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. Derived from a Kirkus review: Neither hagiography nor hatchet job, this illuminating, unauthorized biography sticks to the facts to draw a sharp personal and political portrait of the man who became the first baby boomer to be elected President. Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post reporter Maraniss uses well-honed journalistic skills to dig out the events of Clinton's life from childhood until the day he declared for the presidency in October 1991. Maraniss interviewed some 400 people, all of whom spoke on the record. The result is a balanced account of Clinton's enormous strengths and weaknesses-a rich, thick narrative crammed with abundant detail and an appropriate amount of interpretative analysis. Maraniss clearly shows that from his days as a teen-aged politico in high school and college, through his years at Oxford University and Yale Law School, and throughout his Arkansas political career, Clinton was always a man of contrasts and contradictions. The author notes an instance when Clinton attended a black barbecue and played a round of golf in a restricted club within a matter of hours. The author offers revealing looks at many aspects of Clinton's life, especially his childhood, his coming of age in England, his handling of the draft during the late 1960s, and his political career in Arkansas. Maraniss fully lives up to his goal of creating ``a fair- minded examination of a complicated human being and the forces that shaped him and his generation.''.