Rating: 
Summary: read it if you read the Enquirer
Review: I fell for the hype and bought this book for full price... This book is bad for several reasons. Let me sum them up: 1) It is not believable. The author takes huge liberties in order to make this old story sound sensational, such as his claim about a painting with a woman and a cigar, which is not true and the artist has rebuked. It is conjecture passing as nonfiction... 2) The author's premise is related to the morality of the 60's but somehow it just isn't interesting. 3) The story is old... 4) The author's narcissism is painful to read. Summary: This book is humorous and was carefully crafted, and I want to like it, but unfortunatly I just want my money back.
Rating:
Summary: Take this book...please
Review: Joe Eszterhas certainly suffers from what the hippy/baby boomer generation are accused of suffering from: self-absorption. Good God, does he love his own opinions! He reminds me of Geraldo Rivera here: they both talk about all the women they used to sleep with, pretending to be ashamed and repentant, when the subtext the whole time screams, "Ain't I a stud!" They are pretending to be "confessing," when all they're doing is bragging. He takes Clinton to task, but he also accuses Americans of being too puritannical. (The French think we are too puritannical about Clinton. But then the French said, "In France, Watergate would have been forgotten in three days.") And read NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO by Christopher Hitchens. You'll see that Linda Tripp saved Monica Lewinsky by taping her and urging her to save the blue dress. The Clinton White House was just starting on a smear campaign accusing Lewinsky of fantasizing it all, and stalking Clinton...when that blue dress appeared, that made the campaign stop before it started. It's absolute sacrilege to say so, But Linda Tripp saved Lewinsky's butt. Not the opinion in this book. Eszterhas reminds me of Norman Mailer. He's a dirty old man who pretends to be preoccupied with sex for intellectual reasons...when in fact he's just a lech. Read Harry Stein's HOW I ACCIDENTALLY JOINED THE RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY AND FOUND INNER PEACE before you read this one. It gives the best take on Clinton I've read yet.
Rating: 
Summary: RUSH LIMBAUGH IS RIGHT!
Review: WHEN RUSH LIMBAUGH READ FROM THIS BOOK I HOWLED.WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT THE AUDIO BOOK I BOUGHT IT,IT WAS A SCREAM.I LAUGHED TILL I CRIED.
Rating:
Summary: Impure Reading Enjoyment
Review: The pillars of the American Political scene--which of course includes much of Hollywood--are forcefully exposed and ravaged again and again in this anti-directional, hilarious compilation of raw sex and personal confessions. The cast of characters from the Monica scandal are brutally humiliated from every angle--particularly the inside--with a few getting only slightly bruised, notably James Carville and Larry Flint. Sex, drugs, infidelity, dishonesty, extreme narcissism--the things we most associate with Hollywood--are shown to thrive just as well in Washington.
Rating: 
Summary: Good comparison between Wash. and Hollywood
Review: The Books premise: life in Hollywood and DC are the now ridiculouly the same. How right Joe is. Perhaps the key variable difference between them is still seeking fame drives manics in one city, while the other is power. You end up with the same degenerate (or fun!) result: sex and more sex, but finally sorid hypocritical lies and curruption. The book's demonstration of this is a great and lively read that may constructively lead us to a self-examination. Is Joe warning us all that this is a result of what type of Americans we are allowing ourselves to be? Have our standards sunk this low? If so, thank you Joe for helping us to perhaps recognize this and turn it around.
Rating:
Summary: The Revolting, Hilarious Return of Gonzo Journalism
Review: People forget that Joe Esterhaz was a journalist for "Rolling Stone" before he became Mr. Hollywood Screenwriter. Here he decides to take a page from Hunter Thompson and do the Gonzo version of the Lewinsky affair (in the text he speculates that serpent-head James Carville and Thompson are literally illegitimate brothers.) This book is an excremental attack on the elites of American politics and culture. Not only does he gather together every disgusting fact about Bill Clinton, but he tells some doozies about his Hollywood "friends" (the stories about Farrah Fawcett and Sharon Stone are almost too awful.) The effect is like an early Philip Roth book, like "The Great American Novel", "Portnoy's Complaint", or "On the Air": America's best and brightest, trying to be at their most dignified (like at a Clinton inauguration), get pantsed instead. This is, in fact, the greatest summation of the past eight years I have yet read. I stand in awe.
Rating:
Summary: Fear and Gut Wrenching Terror in Mississippi
Review: This is hands down on of the best TWO books I have ever read. You can read the bold print stuff by itself and laugh yourself nauseous or read the whole thing and vacillate between edge of your seat curiosity and out-and-out terror over which one of us is going to be snuffed out next. Definitely not for the faint at heart.
Rating: 
Summary: No Star Billing
Review: I'm thoroughly disgusted with myself for buying this trash. This ugly screed makes The National Enquirer look like the Congressional Record. I'm all for invective, but this guy has no subtlety, no wit, and less insight than the smarmy columnists in most men's mags.
Rating:
Summary: American Rhapsody
Review: I am not sure what I expected when I started to read this book but this book was certianly not what I expected."American Rhapsody" by Joe Eszterhas uses the Clinton Lewinsky affair as a kind of metaphore for all that is/was wrong (or right if your are Joe Eszterhas) with the Sixties and the Hollywood counter culture, illicit sex, drugs, more drugs, radical polotics, and more illicit sex. I gave this book a second star because it did at times succede in two of it's major goals: 1) It did on occasion make me laugh and 2) It Almost (On occasion) made me, a charter member of the vast right wing conspiracy, feel sorry for Clinton. Make no mistake however, this is NOT a nice book by any means, in fact it is one of the meanist and most vicious books I have ever read. Joe Eszterhas Clearly is a egotistical self centered low life, who has only disdain for anyone who profess' any moral value. Eszterhas spends an entire chapter detailing how he "CREATED" Sharon Stone, ( he wrote "basic instinct"). Then got her to have an affair with his (ex?)friend to breakup his marriage so he could marry his friend's newly ex-wife. He spends another entire chapter blasting Arianna Huffington and her Ex-husband for no apperant reason except that she dared to call for the resignation of Bill Clinton. In a chapter tittled "The Ratwoman and the Bag Lady of Sleeze" (Linda Tripp and Lucciane Goldberg) he wites "To those in Washington who learned of the tight connection between Linda Tripp and Lucciane Goldberg, it made perfect sense, the two of them part of the same sleazy photo: the ratwoman gnawing on her bone in her bunting filled gutter and feeding next to her, the noxious bag lady of sleaze, cigerettes drooping from both their bloodred lips." And liberals say Repulican's are mean spirited? My recommendation for this book, wait for the paperback version, you will save some money and with the exta time to fumigate the stench of the Lewinsky scandal the book might seem a little funnier.
Rating:
Summary: Why can't Joe Eszterhas run for office?
Review: I'm a 54 year old woman and I've never seen a Joe Eszterhas movie (my friends call me a prude), so I wasn't going to be first in line to buy his book. But after hearing from so many people that I just HAD to read it, I caved in. I haven't had so much fun in years! I laughed, groaned, gasped and became a recluse for three days. I just couldn't put it down! The scandals are hilarious and shocking; the political observation is brilliant and the writing like machine gun fire. I can't wait for his next book. Or movie, for that matter...
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