Editorial Review:

Drawing from hundreds of interviews with colleagues, friends and with unique access to campaign records, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Carl Bernstein offers a complex and nuanced portrait of one of the most controversial figures of our time: Hillary Clinton. He has given us a book that enables us, at last, to address the questions Americans are insistently--even obsessively--asking: What is her character? What is her political philosophy? Who is she? What can we expect from her?

Read an excerpt from A Woman in Charge
A Woman in Charge is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein's illuminating account of Hillary Rodham Clinton, revealing the complex of motivations and machinations behind her extraordinary life and career. Drawing on over 200 interviews with Clinton associates (both colleagues and adversaries), as well as major pieces written by and about the former First Lady, Bernstein has constructed an indelible portrait of perhaps the most polarizing figure in American politics, from her midwestern roots to her own presidential ambitions; but don't take our word for it--read an excerpt from the first chapter and decide for yourself.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One: Formation

I adored [my father] when I was a little girl. I would eagerly watch for him from a window and run down the street to meet him on his way home after work. With his encouragement and coaching, I played baseball, football and basketball. I tried to bring home good grades to win his approval.
-Living History

Hillary Rodham's childhood was not the suburban idyll suggested by the shaded front porch and gently sloping lawn of what was once the family home at 235 Wisner Street in Park Ridge, Illinois. In this leafy environment of postwar promise and prosperity, the Rodhams were distinctly a family of odd ducks, isolated from their neighbors by the difficult character of her father, Hugh Rodham, a sour, unfulfilled man whose children suffered his relentless, demeaning sarcasm and misanthropic inclination, endured his embarrassing parsimony, and silently accepted his humiliation and verbal abuse of their mother.

Yet as harsh, provocative, and abusive as Rodham was, he and his wife, the former Dorothy Howell, imparted to their children a pervasive sense of family and love for one another that in Hillary's case is of singular importance. When Bill Clinton and Hillary honeymooned in Acapulco in 1975, her parents and her two brothers, Hughie (Hugh Jr.) and Tony, stayed in the same hotel as the bride and groom.

Dorothy and Hugh Rodham, despite the debilitating pathology and undertow of tension in their marriage (discerned readily by visitors to their home), were assertive parents who, at mid-century, intended to convey to their children an inheritance secured by old-fashioned values and verities. They believed (and preached, in their different traditions) that with discipline, hard work, encouragement (often delivered in an unconventional manner), and enough education at home, school, and church, a child could pursue almost any dream. In the case of their only daughter, Hillary Diane, born October 26, 1947, this would pay enormous dividends, sending her into the world beyond Park Ridge with a steadiness and sense of purpose that eluded her two younger brothers. But it came at a price: Hugh imposed a patriarchal unpleasantness and ritual authoritarianism on his household, mitigated only by the distinctly modern notion that Hillary would not be limited in opportunity or skills by the fact that she was a girl.

Hugh Rodham, the son of Welsh immigrants, was sullen, tight-fisted, contrarian, and given to exaggeration about his own accomplishments. Appearances of a sort were important to him: he always drove a new Lincoln or Cadillac. But he wouldn't hesitate to spit tobacco juice through an open window. He chewed his cud habitually, voted a straight Republican ticket, and was infuriatingly slow to praise his children. "He was rougher than a corncob and gruff as could be," an acquaintance once said. Nurturance and praise were left largely to his wife, whose intelligence and abilities he mocked and whose gentler nature he often trampled. "Don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on your way out," he frequently said at the dinner table when she'd get angry and threaten to leave. She never left, but some friends and relatives were perplexed at Dorothy's decision to stay married when her husband's abuse seemed so unbearable.

"She would never say, That's it. I've had it," said Betsy Ebeling,* Hillary's closest childhood friend, who witnessed many contentious scenes at the Rodham dinner table. Sometimes the doorknob remark would break the tension and everybody would laugh. But not always. By the time Hillary had reached her teens, her father seemed defined by his mean edges-he had almost no recognizable enthusiasms or pretense to lightness as he descended into continuous bullying, ill-humor, complaint, and dejection.

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Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Definitely not an encomium.:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's story is both fascinating and impressive. The fact that the renown journalist Carl Bernstein chose to write it, is telling. It's obvious in reading it that Bernstein is no fan of Hillary's, though he begrudgingly tries to portray her fairly. At times he is schizophrenic in his accusations and modest bits of back-handed praise.
O.K.,I'm pro-Hillary and Bernstein is not. This is no paen to the Senator-and-former-first-lady-who-would-be-President, but it is a worthwhile book... more info

National Treasure:

Hillary is hard to hate. She is also hard to take. We owe this author and now Mr. Obama for exposing Hillary more fully than we ever thought possible. By golly, she can't hide now. The primary season seems so prolonged and such a waste of money but in some weird way, it works. It shakes the candidates down, shakes them up, and shows them for who they really are. I have never been a fan, but I know that many admirers finally saw her for what she is. I happen to have some compassion and a little sympathy for... more info

Hillary: Gearing-up for the 2016 Election:

Her US presidential campaign for the 2008 election turned out to be a disaster for her, simply because a dark-horse (Barack Obama) ran much faster than she could. However, she will not give up her life dream. I am sure she is now gearing-up for the 2016 election where this "dark horse" would no longer run after the presumed successful two terms of his US presidency at White House. She could greatly contribute to his cabinet, serving as his VP (vice-president) or Secretary of State or Health with her great... more info

A book that all Democrats ought to read:

I bought this book because, as a former strong supporter of the Clintons through all of their thicks and all of their thins, I was alarmed at how angry I am becoming now at their current behavior in the primaries.
It was described as "sympathetic," and I was hoping to find things there to admire in order to take a more moderate view of her and what seemed to me to be an almost pyschopathic campaign designed (at worst) to bring down the Party and or (even at best) to position herself to be the candidate... more info

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