When Bill Clinton began his second term as President in 1997, he vowed to "repair the breach" that had so divided the country's political parties. Instead, by the end of his term, the Monica Lewinsky scandal proved this breach was more of a deep-sea trench, a chasm that has not just persisted, but grown far wider in the ensuing decades. The scandal has been dug up and thrown into the spotlight during the 2016 presidential election. The behavior of Hillary Clinton during this tumultuous time in her husband's tenure has become the subject of wide-ranging political attacks, making a an accurate and concise chronicle of that period a relevant read.
Peter Baker, current White House correspondent for the New York Times, was a Washington Post reporter for 20 years, where he co-authored the article that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. His 2000 book, The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton, is a definitive, behind-the-scenes account of those harrowing and embarrassing days when lawmakers with their own full closets were frothing at the mouth to dethrone a sitting president. Baker's most recent book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (2013) was a New York Times top 10 book of the year. The Breach was last published in 2012 by Scribner ($27.99, 9781476730073). --Tobias Mutter
