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on August 22, 2013
Even all these years later, the Clinton-Whitewater-Lewinsky saga is compelling reading, for so many reasons. While it is clear that Toobin feels that Clinton was attacked and judged far too harshly for the particular "crime" he committed by trysting with Monica Lewinsky, neither does Clinton's repeated boorish behavior get him (Clinton) off the hook with the author. Many of the multitude of books on the subject seem to present either a viciously anti-Clinton picture, or a total apology for Clinton's behavior, but this one manages to toe the middle line pretty well. Toobin is above all an excellent writer, and the story is still so inherently fascinating that it's difficult to put this one down.
on April 29, 2017
Fascinating look inside what really happened with the Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky & the real right wing conspiracy- Ken Starr was not only incompetent, right wing fanatic but not very smart. Jeffrey Toobin writes with authority and great prose.
on June 21, 2000
Toobin brings three invaluable gifts to this work. His writing is lucid, his narartives are engaging and his politics are (as much as humanly possible) put aside in favor of a clear recitation of the facts. He is not without a thesis, however. He is determined to bring the reader to the conclusion that the American judicial system has co-opted the political system; and both of them have been diminished by that fact. While his arguments are powerful, they are not the compelling component of this book, and I cannot bring myself to completely accept his conclusions.
However, as historians turn back to examine these incidents in the future (I believe it will be of far less interest than we'd like to think) Toobin's book will provide an excellent, mostly dispassionate recital of those elements in these events that have a basis in verifiable fact. He avoids rumor, innuendo and propoganda as much as any person intimately invovled with the reporting of the case could possibly manage. He spares no one from any side of the battle (including, but not limited to the fourth estate). He turns a bright light on the actions of all the players but refuses to indulge in a plethora of psycho-babble to analyze motives, intents or feelings. This is a welcome relief for a reader who wants to separate the muddy swirl of politcal spin from the factual events, in an understandable chronicle.
Partisanship is, for many of us, as essential as breathing. We prefer to indulge in a conspiracy of agreement, reading only those who verify our preconceived beliefs and rejecting utterly anyone who challenges them. Toobin must be read with the understanding he will not pander to your most cherished wishes about this Presidency, whatever they may be. That alone makes this book worth reading, re-reading and retaining for the future.
However, as historians turn back to examine these incidents in the future (I believe it will be of far less interest than we'd like to think) Toobin's book will provide an excellent, mostly dispassionate recital of those elements in these events that have a basis in verifiable fact. He avoids rumor, innuendo and propoganda as much as any person intimately invovled with the reporting of the case could possibly manage. He spares no one from any side of the battle (including, but not limited to the fourth estate). He turns a bright light on the actions of all the players but refuses to indulge in a plethora of psycho-babble to analyze motives, intents or feelings. This is a welcome relief for a reader who wants to separate the muddy swirl of politcal spin from the factual events, in an understandable chronicle.
Partisanship is, for many of us, as essential as breathing. We prefer to indulge in a conspiracy of agreement, reading only those who verify our preconceived beliefs and rejecting utterly anyone who challenges them. Toobin must be read with the understanding he will not pander to your most cherished wishes about this Presidency, whatever they may be. That alone makes this book worth reading, re-reading and retaining for the future.
on January 16, 2017
Jeffery always delivers
on May 15, 2017
Toobin is an admirable, knowledgeable, serious, and honest writer.
on November 13, 2014
I don't think Jeffrey Toobin can write a bad book! It should not come as a surprise this book will be disturbing, but in Toobin's easy writing style, a very interesting and unfortunate epic of our presidency is revealed. Nothing will make Clinton's adulterous behavior or his perjury any less offensive. However, the other individuals and activities leading up to Clinton's impeachment trials will probably surprise you--and I do not mean Monica.
on July 12, 2000
After reading the first two pages of Vast Conspiracy, you will be hooked. Jeffery Toobin has crafted a political analysis that reads like a political thriller.
Yet in writing a fascinating, disturbing, and often wildly funny book, Toobin loses none of the objectivity, expertise, and standards that make him television's top legal analyst. Toobin's greatest achievement is walking the reader through the swirl of events step by step so the patterns and relationships become clear. He also displays a gift for explaining complicated legal issues in everyday terms. And, he brings a sense of history, a sympathetic understanding of people, and actual experience in an independent counsel's office to his stage.
For example, when discussing sexual harassment, he summarizes its history as a legal concept, explains in depth its role in the impeachment scandal, and even reveals when the term was coined. When discussing a principal character, he presents a biographical sketch illuminating that person as a three-dimensional human being with a past, beliefs, and values of his or her own, values that shaped and colored their actions.
Toobin expresses such concern for historical and human context throughout his book. The result is a work that does not narrowly focus on immediate events but instead examines the political and legal forces that stewed and fermented for decades before Monica Lewinsky was born and culminated in the Clinton impeachment trial.
To help readers keep track of the overlapping events and myriad of personalities involved, Toobin includes a chronology of events and a cast of characters. All this, and it's a great read too! Of all the works that have come out of the Clinton trial, this is the most accessible to a general audience and the most important. If you read only one book about the impeachment, it should be this one.
Yet in writing a fascinating, disturbing, and often wildly funny book, Toobin loses none of the objectivity, expertise, and standards that make him television's top legal analyst. Toobin's greatest achievement is walking the reader through the swirl of events step by step so the patterns and relationships become clear. He also displays a gift for explaining complicated legal issues in everyday terms. And, he brings a sense of history, a sympathetic understanding of people, and actual experience in an independent counsel's office to his stage.
For example, when discussing sexual harassment, he summarizes its history as a legal concept, explains in depth its role in the impeachment scandal, and even reveals when the term was coined. When discussing a principal character, he presents a biographical sketch illuminating that person as a three-dimensional human being with a past, beliefs, and values of his or her own, values that shaped and colored their actions.
Toobin expresses such concern for historical and human context throughout his book. The result is a work that does not narrowly focus on immediate events but instead examines the political and legal forces that stewed and fermented for decades before Monica Lewinsky was born and culminated in the Clinton impeachment trial.
To help readers keep track of the overlapping events and myriad of personalities involved, Toobin includes a chronology of events and a cast of characters. All this, and it's a great read too! Of all the works that have come out of the Clinton trial, this is the most accessible to a general audience and the most important. If you read only one book about the impeachment, it should be this one.
on April 30, 2017
Well written, thorough, account of Clinton's impeachment. The author's learned comments on the performance of the attorneys involved offered insight and understanding lacking in other books.
on June 17, 2000
Ordinarily, to review a book is to analyze whether or not the author did a good job writing it. For example, was it well written? Did it hold the reader's interest? Was it well researched? And so on. However, when people review books on such hot-button topics as Bill and Hillary Clinton, there is a pattern which almost invariably holds true and one which has nothing to do with the above concept of a "normal" book review: those who agree with the author's views rate these books highly, while those who disagree with the author's viewpoint will pan it.
For example, take a book which is highly supportive of Bill and/or Hillary Clinton (or at least highly critical of the anti-Bill and Hillary forces). You will rarely, if ever, hear a anti-Clinton person say: "I really disagreed with what the author had to say, but this was a really well-written book!" (even if it was). Conversely, a pro-Clinton person will rarely criticize such a book even if it was complete trash, in terms of quality. Of course, the same rules hold true for anti-Clinton books as well. The reason for these patterns is obvious: people aren't opining on the quality of the book, they're opining on whether or not they agree with the author's substantive views.
With this book, let's use a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being those who would pace all of the blame of the Paula Jones/ Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton impeachment saga squarely on the shoulders of the actual or perceived anti-Clinton forces (his enemies in Arkansas, Ken Starr, the House Republicans, etc., etc.), and 10 being those who would place all of the blame on Clinton himself. On that scale, I would put Toobin at about a 3 (and before Clinton's January, 1998 deposition in the Paula Jones case, even lower than that).
Although I would put myself at a higher number (not 10, but certainly higher than Toobin), I nevertheless gave the book 5 stars--thus making myself an exception to my own rule of thumb. This is because, if I attempt to evaluate the book in a "pure book review" fashion, and not simply based on whether I agree with the author, I have to give credit where it is due. I find Toobin to be an excellent writer who rarely writes a dull paragraph. The book held my interest throughout, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who was interested in this subject, regardless of their political persuasions.
HOWEVER, if I were to review the book just based on whether or not I agree with Toobin (as I contend most people do), I would give it about 3 stars. It is true that Toobin has some harsh words for Clinton, and that he does not hesitate to call him a liar based on his Paula Jones deposition (unlike, say, the House Democrats, who had an almost comical inability to utter the "L word" at any time, no matter how obvious the lies may have been). In addition, using my scale above, it would be hard for someone to read this book and not have their grade moved down by at least a point or two (unlike they were a James Carville-type who started out at a 1 to begin with.)
On the whole however, I felt that there was too many occasions, where he simply chose not to include facts which would have hurt Clinton's case, or in which he would acknowledge Clinton's errors on a micro perspective, but then immediately attempt to justify them on a macro perspective. A few miscellaneous examples of these 2 points:
1. When Clinton said "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is", Toobin calls the remark "foolish", but then immediately calls his "larger point" a "fair one." That's ridiculous.
2. On Hillary's remark about a "vast right- wing conspiracy", he first says that if you "parse the words" the phrase but does "hold up", but then immediately says it has "the unmistakable ring of truth".
3. With regard to Clinton's infamous September 17 speech just after his grand jury testimony, he first briefly criticizes it, and then immediately says that "the public embraced it." That certainly was not my recollection.
4. He takes Lucianne Goldberg" to task for calling some Arkansans "trailer trash", but never mentions that James Carville said the exact same thing about Paula Jones.
5. On the issue of the definition of "sexual relations", the videotape clearly shows Clinton listening attentively while his lawyer Bob Bennett declared unequivocally that there was "no sex of any kind" between Clinton and Lewinsky. Toobin gives Clinton a free pass on this one , saying it wasn't Clinton's job to monitor what Bennett said, a defense I found weak indeed.
6. He mentions that, in 1974, the House Committee voted to reject an article of impeachment that involved Nixon's cheating on his income taxes, but fails to note that most democrats voted FOR this article.
There are other examples as well, which often left me with the feeling that Toobin was frequently trying to persuade us with a legal brief, rather than a completely even-handed telling of the story. However, for all of that, I still gave the book 5 stars, I think Toobin is a fine writer (and not unpersuasive) and would still recommend it.
For example, take a book which is highly supportive of Bill and/or Hillary Clinton (or at least highly critical of the anti-Bill and Hillary forces). You will rarely, if ever, hear a anti-Clinton person say: "I really disagreed with what the author had to say, but this was a really well-written book!" (even if it was). Conversely, a pro-Clinton person will rarely criticize such a book even if it was complete trash, in terms of quality. Of course, the same rules hold true for anti-Clinton books as well. The reason for these patterns is obvious: people aren't opining on the quality of the book, they're opining on whether or not they agree with the author's substantive views.
With this book, let's use a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being those who would pace all of the blame of the Paula Jones/ Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton impeachment saga squarely on the shoulders of the actual or perceived anti-Clinton forces (his enemies in Arkansas, Ken Starr, the House Republicans, etc., etc.), and 10 being those who would place all of the blame on Clinton himself. On that scale, I would put Toobin at about a 3 (and before Clinton's January, 1998 deposition in the Paula Jones case, even lower than that).
Although I would put myself at a higher number (not 10, but certainly higher than Toobin), I nevertheless gave the book 5 stars--thus making myself an exception to my own rule of thumb. This is because, if I attempt to evaluate the book in a "pure book review" fashion, and not simply based on whether I agree with the author, I have to give credit where it is due. I find Toobin to be an excellent writer who rarely writes a dull paragraph. The book held my interest throughout, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who was interested in this subject, regardless of their political persuasions.
HOWEVER, if I were to review the book just based on whether or not I agree with Toobin (as I contend most people do), I would give it about 3 stars. It is true that Toobin has some harsh words for Clinton, and that he does not hesitate to call him a liar based on his Paula Jones deposition (unlike, say, the House Democrats, who had an almost comical inability to utter the "L word" at any time, no matter how obvious the lies may have been). In addition, using my scale above, it would be hard for someone to read this book and not have their grade moved down by at least a point or two (unlike they were a James Carville-type who started out at a 1 to begin with.)
On the whole however, I felt that there was too many occasions, where he simply chose not to include facts which would have hurt Clinton's case, or in which he would acknowledge Clinton's errors on a micro perspective, but then immediately attempt to justify them on a macro perspective. A few miscellaneous examples of these 2 points:
1. When Clinton said "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is", Toobin calls the remark "foolish", but then immediately calls his "larger point" a "fair one." That's ridiculous.
2. On Hillary's remark about a "vast right- wing conspiracy", he first says that if you "parse the words" the phrase but does "hold up", but then immediately says it has "the unmistakable ring of truth".
3. With regard to Clinton's infamous September 17 speech just after his grand jury testimony, he first briefly criticizes it, and then immediately says that "the public embraced it." That certainly was not my recollection.
4. He takes Lucianne Goldberg" to task for calling some Arkansans "trailer trash", but never mentions that James Carville said the exact same thing about Paula Jones.
5. On the issue of the definition of "sexual relations", the videotape clearly shows Clinton listening attentively while his lawyer Bob Bennett declared unequivocally that there was "no sex of any kind" between Clinton and Lewinsky. Toobin gives Clinton a free pass on this one , saying it wasn't Clinton's job to monitor what Bennett said, a defense I found weak indeed.
6. He mentions that, in 1974, the House Committee voted to reject an article of impeachment that involved Nixon's cheating on his income taxes, but fails to note that most democrats voted FOR this article.
There are other examples as well, which often left me with the feeling that Toobin was frequently trying to persuade us with a legal brief, rather than a completely even-handed telling of the story. However, for all of that, I still gave the book 5 stars, I think Toobin is a fine writer (and not unpersuasive) and would still recommend it.
