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The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s Hardcover – October 6, 2015
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The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the charismatic and flawed baby boomer president, along with his polarizing but increasingly popular wife, Hillary.
Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the 1990s was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over. America was stable and prosperous. Yet Americans felt more unmoored and isolated. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, but his complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined.
Historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the decade's cultural changes. Taking the '90s year-by-year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it, offering answers to two enduring questions about Bill Clinton's legacy: How did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And, to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the following decade, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market?
Even more relevant as we head toward the 2016 election, The Age of Clinton will appeal to readers on both sides of the aisle as it chronicles the wild, transformative decade and the president at its center.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThomas Dunne Books
- Publication dateOctober 6, 2015
- Dimensions6 x 1.06 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101250063728
- ISBN-13978-1250063724
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A fun romp through the decade and an intelligent way of understanding the cultural context and legacy of Bill Clinton’s era." -Associated Press
“With the 1990s passing from memory into history, Gil Troy, one of our leading political historians, is here to help us make sense of it. He not only takes us through the highs and lows of Bill Clinton's underappreciated presidency but sets its political events within the context of the cultural and technological developments that were transforming the country. In Troy's eminently readable narrative, filled with revealing nuggets of information, Clinton emerges, for all his foibles, as the rare president who grasped the future before it happened and helped set the nation on a course of progress.” ―David Greenberg, author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency
“Offering a sweeping cultural and political review of the 1990s, Gil Troy ties together the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Newt Gingrich, Bill Gates, Kurt Cobain, and Harry Potter. He convincingly identifies the decade as the Age of Clinton for the president who personified its noble aspirations, notable achievements, missed opportunities, and embarrassing excesses.” ―Donald A. Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: A History of the Washington Press Corps
“It takes an historian of enormous skill and subtlety to capture a man as complicated as Bill Clinton and a time as confusing as America in the 1990s. Gil Troy is that historian. His book is fresh, compelling, and fascinating. It combines powerful storytelling with creative synthesis. It's the best book on the man and his times.” ―Steven M. Gillon, author of The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation
“Gil Troy's The Age of Clinton is a delightful romp down our memory lane of the 1990s. The narrative is seamless and written with insightful verve. Highly recommended!” ―Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Cronkite
“This is the book we didn't know we were waiting for. It is the needed correction to the lazy idea that because we had peace and prosperity in the 1990s not much happened. Gil Troy shows us that living through history is no guarantee we understand it. Only now do I realize how much I missed. Troy takes the history seriously and shows us why we should too in an engrossing and balanced cultural study of the first order.” ―Rick Shenkman, publisher of History News Network
“Gil Troy takes us on a captivating safari through America in the 1990s. His book on the Clinton years has a brilliant insight on just about every page about the president, the politics, the culture, and all of us. It's a magnificent read.” ―Lesley Stahl, correspondent, Sixty Minutes
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Product details
- Publisher : Thomas Dunne Books; F First Edition (October 6, 2015)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250063728
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250063724
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.06 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,942,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,141 in United States Executive Government
- #4,467 in US Presidents
- #9,359 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
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This is the quality of work we should expect from a Yale Ph.D.? The author is correct in his assessment that a comprehensive book about the 1990s that analyzes its broader culture and history in tandem with the Clinton presidency is needed. However, that book still has yet to be written.
For movement conservatives, President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 1990s symbolized the excesses of the 1960s that their anti-60s rhetoric was aimed at denouncing. Unfortunately, President Clinton then proceeded to live up to spirit of libertinism that their anti-60s rhetoric aimed to denounce.
In THE AGE OF CLINTON: AMERICA IN THE 1990S (2015), Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University in Canada, adapts the spirit of the conservative anti-60s rhetoric as his framework. For example, he says, “As the Baby Boomer rebels’ torch-bearer, [Bill] Clinton embodied the tumult of the 1960s” (5). Of course we should note that in addition to the Baby Boomer rebels, there were also Baby Boomer non-rebels who resisted some or all of the causes embraced by the rebels. As a result of their resistance, the non-rebels were candidates to be recruited by the anti-60s rhetoric of movement conservatism.
But Troy explicitly claims that his “intent is neither to demonize nor canonize [Bill] Clinton but to understand and explain [him and his presidency]” (9). To be sure, Troy definitely does not canonize Bill Clinton as a saint. Instead, he describes him as an admitted sinner with reference to his reckless consensual sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky.
But by his own admission, Troy “emphasiz[es] domestic policy more than foreign policy” (9). As a result, he makes almost no effort to contextualize any of President Clinton’s foreign policy actions. As a result, Troy’s book is little more than history lite, at best.
For the purposes of contextualizing Bill Clinton, Troy works with what he refers to as five significant revolutions and one counter-revolution (7-8). For Troy, “the Sixties revolution” (305) includes President Lyndon B. Johnson’s envisioned Great Society. However, Troy allows that “at times [President] Clinton legitimized [President Ronald] Reagan’s anti-Great-Society counter-revolution” (304). Even so, for all practical purposes, Troy’s counter-revolution is what I have referred to already as movement conservatism, which started before the 1960s. In a similar way, many of the things targeted in the anti-60s rhetoric of movement conservatism started before the 1960s – for example, the black civil rights movement.
As Troy himself indicates, certain aspects of his five significant revolutions actually carried forward into the 1990s thrusts of the 1960s. He says, “The new world he [President Clinton], his wife, and their peers helped spawn was so foreign, he paid an exorbitant political price” – impeachment by the House of Representatives (8).
If you’ve lived through the ‘90s, this will feel like a nostalgic trip into the past. Troy references the news stories we all remember (Anita Hill, Rodney King, the OJ Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, and genocide in Rwanda) and the pop culture touchstones that define the ‘90s (Harry Potter, “Thelma and Louise,” Madonna, Billy Ray Cyrus, “The Blair Witch Project,” Y2K, and “West Wing”). At times, it all feels very “Forrest Gump,” with Troy racing through the highs and lows, the tragedies and the silliness that define the 1990s. There’s little actual depth here, and nothing that seemed new or strikingly revealing, but it is at times a hoot to relive these years through Troy’s very sharp lens.
Clinton himself comes across as a man who embraced both the successes of the Reagan years and the magical promise of a technological future. He led American into the computer age, tried to tackle the health care problem, battled his own weaknesses and failings, and ended up – as Troy puts it – as both a hypocrite and a “noble game changer.” The Age of Clinton, says Troy, was “an Age of Giddiness,” “an Age of Indulgence,” and “an Age of Skepticism.” And Clinton’s “unique mix of vice and virtue, of cynicism and idealism, of craftiness and innocence, of frankness and falseness, worked in the 1990s.”
THE AGE OF CLINTON isn’t totally successful in its attempt to define both a President and a decade. At times its lists seem dizzying, and I found myself lost in the overwhelming quantity of its details. Troy also assumes that his readers are familiar with the events and personalities he references – he provides very little background, and even less depth of discussion. When he writes about Anita Hill, for example, he assumes we know who she is, and why she was testifying at Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing. It’s the same with Troy’s portrayal of the Monica Lewinsky affair and Clinton’s eventual impeachment – he mentions the “blue dress,” and Clinton’s famous parsing of the word “is,” but explains none of it.
Troy’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton is interesting. He shows her morphing from Bill’s “Co-President and Health Care Czarina,” to “Hillary the Celebrity” (with the publication of her book “It Takes a Village”), to “the Wronged Wife,” and finally to an “Independent Woman” running for her own Senate seat . . . and eventually for President in her own right. It’s interesting watching her develop as both a woman and a candidate.
I liked parts of THE AGE OF CLINTON very much, and Troy definitely has a knack for drawing together such diverse elements as politics, pop culture, and media craziness. Then again, perhaps they aren’t diverse at all. And I found many similarities between the 1990s and the 2010s – the same desperate division between Democrats and Republicans, the same arguments over health care and gay rights, the same fears about gun violence and school shootings, the same fixation on technology and the Internet, and the same obsessions with sex and scandal. It was eye-opening to realize how much of what America is today was born in the decade of Clinton’s presidency. This book paints an interesting portrait of America in the 1990s, even if it leaves the reader less than fully satisfied.
[Please note: I was provided a copy of this book for review; the opinions expressed here are my own.]






