Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780700621941)

Of the original Gilded Age, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote: "There is no other period in the nation's history when politics seems so completely dwarfed by economic changes, none in which the life of the country rests so completely in the hands of the industrial entrepreneur." The era of William Jefferson Clinton's ascent to the presidency was strikingly similar--nothing less, Clinton himself said, than "a paradigm shift . . . from the industrial age to an information-technology age, from the Cold War to a global society." How Bill Clinton met the challenges of this new Gilded Age is the subject of Patrick J. Maney's book: an in-depth perspective on the 42nd president of the United States and the transformative era over which he presided.

Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President goes beyond personality and politics to examine the critical issues of the day: economic and fiscal policy, business and financial deregulation, healthcare and welfare reform, and foreign affairs in a post-Cold War world. But at its heart is Bill Clinton in all his guises: the first baby boomer to reach the White House; the "natural"--the most gifted politician of his generation, but one with an inexplicably careless and self-destructive streak; the "Comeback Kid," repeatedly overcoming long odds; the survivor, frequently down but never out; and, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, part of the most controversial First Couple since Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Maney's book is, in sum, the most succinct and up-to-date study of the Clinton presidency, invaluable not merely for understanding a transformative era in American history, but presidential, national, and global politics today.

Author: Patrick J. Maney
ISBN-10: 0700621946
ISBN-13: 9780700621941
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Language: English
Published: 02/15/2016
Pages: 346
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2016