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My Life
by Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton's My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public. [Knopf]
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 957 pages
06/22/2004
$35.00
ISBN: 0375414576
Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
Current Events & Politics
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Frank McCourt
This is a massive book, more than memoir, more than history. It is, with all due respect to the Pope, the journey of a soul, many-layered, complex, tantalizing.
London Review Of Books David Simpson
This book cannot be expected to set straight the historical record on the Clinton presidency, and it doesn't claim to. But it is well worth reading, and worth pondering.
San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen
A genuinely good and useful book. Not a literary masterpiece. Not a tour de force of penetrating self- analysis, either, though Clinton wins points for trying. But a panoramic, richly informative account of the first president in years to embody the myth of America as a country where anyone can grow up to be president.
The Independent Shirley Williams
The book provides insights and observations that outweigh the effort to navigate a lot of boring detail.
The New York Times Larry McMurtry
I happen to like long, smart, dense narratives and read My Life straight through, happily. I may not know Bill Clinton any better than I did when I started, but I know recent history better, which surely can't hurt.
The Nation Stanley I. Kutler
Clinton, true to form, is enchanting and infuriating, fascinating and perplexing, with some lies and evasions, as well as some truth and revelations; and always accommodating, eager to please. The personal and the political are intertwined. Vintage Clinton.
The New Republic Ronald Steel
It would be a mistake to cavil too much over the low crimes and misdemeanors in this book. The reader must regard My Life not as a literary work or even as a first cut at history, but as a celebrity tell-all or, more accurately, tell-some.
The New Yorker Hendrik Hertzberg
The problem is that the book is not a sculpture garden. It's a quarry. It's a strip mine. There's gold in that thar hill, but it's veined among layers of rocky sediment, and you have to bring your own pickaxe.
Village Voice Ed Park
No doubt this reviewer's affection for My Life lies partly in a hallucinatory misreading of the ex-president's memoirs as the great lost Portis novel.
Washington Post Walter Isaacson
His life is too fascinating, his mind too brilliant, his desire to charm too strong to permit him to produce a boring book. The combination of analytic and emotional intelligence that made him a great politician now makes him a compelling raconteur.
The Guardian Jonathan Freedland
That's the style throughout, warm and approachable - just like the Clinton persona itself. And it is quite true that the book resembles both the man and his presidency.
Los Angeles Times Tim Rutten
The result is much like the public man, fascinating but ultimately unsatisfying. There are flashes of incisive brilliance and numbing stretches of tedious self-absorption.
Los Angeles Times Ronald Brownstein
Clinton's reluctance to candidly explore his own decisions is compounded by a conspicuous refusal to draw conclusions that could hurt any of his political allies.
New York Review Of Books Garry Wills
By chance I saw a revival of Leonard Bernstein's musical Wonderful Town, just before getting my copy of the Clinton book. All through the 957 pages of it, a song from the show kept running through my head: "What a waste! What a waste!"
PopMatters James Oliphant
Bill Clinton, as he writes in the foreword, has a good story to tell. He tells it, unfortunately, in excruciating fashion, substituting detail for soul, and spreading the events of his compelling life over a canvas so thin that the power of the work is almost irreparably diluted.
Publishers Weekly
Rather than expose the hurricane's eye of a remarkable life and an eventful presidency, the book instead blurs into an unrelenting blizzard of names, dates, campaigns, speeches, events, handshakes, tangential observations, memories, meetings, cities and towns, and anecdotes.
Boston Globe Michael D. Langan
Regrettably, Clinton's oratorical talents don't readily translate to his writing skills.
Chicago Tribune James Warren
And still, any student of the American presidency should read this unavoidably flawed, inescapably engaging take on a most remarkable life.
Boston Globe Ken Bode
The ensuing 500 pages on the Clinton presidency is like getting a shot of Novocain between the eyes. It is not writing, it is annotated stenography. This part of the book could have been edited with a lawnmower.
Houston Chronicle Fritz Lanham
It's boring, absurdly overlong and, as far as I can tell, devoid of major new information.
Atlantic Monthly Tom Carson
Predictably, the shrieker right looked at My Life and saw Kill Bill, Vol. 3. But if clamor-gal Ann Coulter's zeal to play Uma Thurman forced her to slog through every word, all I can say is that Bill has had a modest revenge for Whitewater.
Daily Telegraph Alexander Chancellor
Although he decided early in life that one of his principal ambitions was to "write a great book", and although he seems to think that this one could be it, he lacks any of the qualities of a good writer.
The Independent Cal McCrystal
In Clinton's scarcely inspiring, indeed frequently dull chronology, there are few clear, arresting lines among the wobble and oscillation.
The Economist
Very far from being great, or even particularly good. The book is so long-winded and ill-disciplined that the genuinely good bits get lost in the verbiage.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Roger Morris
This shallow, boring memoir (who would have thought the words would ever apply to him?) does at least confirm Clinton as a cautious politician.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Michael O'Brien
The early part of My Life may be the better, as memoir, because Clinton has read many good writers. But the later part casts grave doubt on that theory.
The Spectator Anthony Howard
Somewhere in this fat, bloated tome there is a lean, muscular story struggling to get out. But it never quite makes it and all we are left with is a wobbly heap of political blancmange.
USA Today Bob Minzesheimer
Not a great book. It's not even a good book, but like its author, it has its moments and flashes of insight.
The New York Times Book Review Michiko Kakutani
Sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull -- the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.
The Onion A.V. Club Nathan Rabin
A punishing 957-page bore that lacks wit or insight.
Wall Street Journal Mark Steyn
Mr. Clinton's book is a double flop: Either stake your claim to join the guys on Mount Rushmore or embrace your destiny as a guy who rushes to mount more. The president does neither and winds up with a book that reads like the world's biggest Rolodex punctuated by self-doubt.
Daily Telegraph Anne Applebaum
Not just hard to read, it's unreadable.
 The average user rating for this book is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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