In Bill and Hillary, Duke University history professor William H. Chafe (Never Stop Running) draws a powerful connection between the political careers of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their personal relationships, tracing the lives of the former U.S. president and the current Secretary of State through their troubled childhoods, their college years and into the political tempest of the 1990s.
Chafe emphasizes throughout his book that the Clintons' personal lives--independently and together--cannot be separated from their public political work. Both experienced childhoods that left them with a profound respect for social justice and for creating change within the political system. Bill's personal struggles over whether or not to go to Vietnam deeply affected his college years, as did Hillary's commitment to seeking a calm middle ground amid the often-radical political demands of the 1960s. It was the tension of the Clintons' marriage as much as the professional powerhouse they assembled that catapulted Bill up the political ranks, from Arkansas attorney general to governor to the presidency, Chafe explains--and it was the couple's personal response to the Lewinsky scandal that finally gave Hillary the emotional and intellectual freedom to become a political force in her own right. Bill and Hillary is a nuanced and compassionate testament to the inseparability of public and private life. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket