BLOOD SPORT: The President and His Adversaries (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Remember Whitewater? Well, yes, that was about 11 Clinton scandals ago, and less serious than some of its successors. In this book, James B. Stewart, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about the Boesky-Milken days on Wall Street, Den of Thieves, provides a unified, novelistic account of the Clintons' Arkansas financial wheeling-dealing. It is useful reading in that it serves up the tell-tale psychology that, no doubt, is behind all the Clinton controversies: Bill and Hillary's desire to make big money (legally) without being seen as the kind of people who would try to.

From Library Journal

From Den of Thieves to den of iniquity? the former first-page editor of the Wall Street Journal on the White House.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (February 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684831392
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831398
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,038,182 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Whitewater Explained--Finally, May 12, 2001

By	Jamie Jeffords (South Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If anyone is still interested in what the fuss was all about, they should read this. Blood Sport is written totally objectively and deals with all the players involved in every Clinton scandal except for Monica, which broke after publication.

The book details the business partnerships the Clintons had with the McDougals from the 1970's on the 1990's and its fall out. The story stretches from Arkansas to the White House and even goes a bit into the suicide of Vince Foster.

Stewart makes no judgments as to whether any impropriety occurred in any business dealings, so this is a good place to start for an objective reader who wants to make up his own mind about the whole sordid mess.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Convinced this Republican, April 22, 2005

By	Michael Heath (North Woods of Michigan) - See all my reviews

I read this book in 1997 when the paperback came out. I approached this book as a moderate GOP much in love with Reagan and Bush 41. I never voted for Clinton, but was intrigued by him for several reasons:

1) He was executing wonderfully in '97 (see Morris' "Behind the Oval Office" for this period), even though the GOP-dominated house had elevated partisan politics to the art form it is today.
2) The Press was crucifying him over Whitewater and I did not understand why, it all seemed so trivial.

My conclusions:
There is a case to be that Hillary Clinton may have evaded taxes and obstructed justice - while criminal and deserving of law enforcement investigation, no reason for an investigation against the President instigated by the DoJ.

Stewart confirms that the investigation of Whitewater was pure politics of personal destruction. Bill Clinton did nothing wrong, certainly nothing that demanded any sort of investigation and obstructed his ability to preside over our nation.

There were trivial matters that make President Clinton less than perfect, but you can find dirt on any ambituous person. The question is, did his actions have a negative impact on our country? This book presents no evidence of that, the only negativity emanating out of this was the ammunition it provided to the GOP and the media to divert our attention from matters of State.

One somewhat comic note was the number of idiots that were part of the Clinton circle. While Clinton was a master at bringing together extremely bright and powerful moderates and attempting to pull the Dems out of the socialistic FDR era, the people he associated with more regularly are a hoot!

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Balanced, accessible and ultimately so sad, January 8, 2003

By A Customer

James B. Stewart is a very rare writer, indeed -- especially in regards to the Clintons. He's a genuine reporter looking for the facts and he appears to have no agenda (meaning he's not the apologist Gail Sheehy is, nor is he the demonizer Anne Coulter is). He presents the failed land deal of Whitewater for what it was -- a bad and perhaps even improper investment that was made to look illegal by the stumbling, bumbling and arrogance of the Clintons. Ditto for Hillary's commodities trading. There are no high crimes here, and if the First Lady hadn't been so determined to protect her privacy it may have just evaporated. If only Bill and Hillary had listened to lawyer (and Watergate veteran) Nussbaum and made their records/returns available in the first place, taxpayers would have been spared millions of dollars in investigations and the President would have been better able to concentrate on health care, education, foreign policy and all the other issues he discussed in the campaign. And if a special prosecutor hadn't already been in place, it's possible none of us would even know the name "Monica Lewinsky." It almost made me ache for what might have been.

Stewart makes the complicated accessible and breathes life into Little Rock and White House denizens. Jim MacDougall, Nussbaum and especially Vince Foster are more sympathetic, human and ultimately tragic than ever before. And I wonder how new This Week commentator George Stephanopolous feels about this book ... This book does not depict him in his finest hour.