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Summary: Hillary found her authors!
Review: This book was eagerly anticipated by those of us who followed the ordeal of the Clintons from day one and knew that Hillary Clinton was speaking the truth when she said that the real story was of the vast right wing conspiracy that had hounded them from the time Clinton was running for governor in Arkansas. The complicity of the "left wing media" in promoting the story repudiates the assumption that it is in the democratic pocket. The proof is in the pudding, and lies within the brilliant investigative reporting of Conason and Lyons thoroughly documented with facts. The public will not forget the debacle they were forced to endure for "the rule of law" and those who "really" read the book will speak with the only voice they have in November, their vote!
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Summary: A chronicle of the hard Right's low, dishonest decade.
Review: Auden wrote about the 1930's as being a "low, dishonest decade." That was nothing compared to the 1990's on the part of the hard Right. Conason and Lyons tear the cover off of a loose cabal of former segregationists, opportunists, and conspiracy theorists--along with a willing media--who tried to bring the Clintons down. The authors provide thorough documentation of a widespread smear campaign against the President. This is in contrast to the one-star reviewers who accuse the authors of lies and half-truths without giving any examples. These one-star reviews illustrate the very tactics of the book's subjects: accuse someone of wrongdoing many times and hope it will stick. I spent the 1990's listening to talk radio--both secular and religious--and was shocked at the vile rumor-mongering about the Clintons. I'm glad that Conason and Lyons mentioned that radio personality Rush Limbaugh spread the (false) rumor that a newsletter reported that Vince Foster died in Hillary Clinton's apartment; I only wish the authors had gone further and discussed how Nightline's Ted Koppel accepted Limbaugh's lame backpedaling that he was only discussing the kind of wild rumors being circulated (the transcripts of Limbaugh's show suggest otherwise--as the watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has documented). This is the best book I have read in a long time. I couldn't put it down. Highest Recommendation.
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Summary: Our Book is Carefully Documented
Review: We greatly appreciate the interest in our book shown by Amazon customers. But in a few of the reviews posted here, our research and even our truthfulness has been questioned. Although it would be miraculous if there were no errors in The Hunting of the President, we did make every effort to check facts. Unlike some current nonfiction authors, we also provide copious source citations, both in the text and in 27 pages of endnotes. One of the less careful critics who reviewed us on Amazon is someone calling himself Doc Parghi, who clearly has not read our book. Doc claims that Rivera Live said we had wrongly named a "Republican counsel" as an associate of Newt Gingrich, when that "counsel had never met Gingrich in his life." What really happened was as follows: The Republican lawyer in question appeared with us on Rivera -- and then loudly misrepresented what our book said about him in a dishonest effort to discredit our work. The few paragraphs about this GOP lawyer, whose name is Mark Braden, are on p. 59. They describe him accurately as someone connected to Gingrich who joined in a secret dirty-tricks campaign against Clinton in 1992 that was funded by one of Gingrich's closest associates-- a Chicago millionaire named Peter W. Smith. This is all completely documented and footnoted. It would have been ridiculous for Braden, the former general counsel of the Republican National Committee, to deny that he has "ever met Gingrich," and he said nothing of the kind on Rivera. He did claim that he didn't know Gingrich very well, but our book doesn't say that he did. Significantly, Braden didn't attempt to deny the far more important description of him, as one of those working with Smith to defame Clinton. We hope readers of every political persuasion will judge our book as a serious and rigorously documented effort to reveal the facts behind the campaign against the Clintons.
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Summary: Hunters and Prey
Review: As another reviewer has noted, the authors early on get bogged down in the sordid operatives of Arkansas politics. But this gradually builds into an understanding of the magnitude of the effort by the race-baiters and holy rollers (often the same people) to villify a moderate, genial, tolerant, if deeply flawed politician, who dared to created a politics of inclusiveness with which, thank God, the majority of Americans agree. What surprised me while things were evolving, which the writers emphasize, was not the obsessive rantings of the Rush Limbaughs, the incessant cackling of the MSNBC and FoxTV gossips and their talking heads, but the aquiescence and active support of the so-called liberal media (the NY Times above all) in this ongoing lynching.
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Summary: When Will the NYT Follow the Example of the Pope?
Review: The Pope has just confessed the sins of the Catholic Church where it has harmed lives over the years. When will the New York Times confess its sins as its writers and editors have participated in the pernicious hunting of Bill and Hillary Clinton? As Conason and Lyons prove in this book, the NYT and other media outlets were instrumental in allowing a right-wing cabal to ensnare the President of the United States when it became clear there were no chargeable offense related to Whitewater. We now know the various "gates" are dry sockets. Empty holes. No wrongdoing in Whitewater. No wrongdoing in Filegate. World without end, amen. And so the cabal seized Monica. Conason and Lyons show us that the entire impeachment campaign was based on a false swearing by Paula Jones. She could not provide evidence to support her sworn claim of being harmed by Clinton. They show us that cabal members actively worked to stop the early settlement of the faulty Paula Jones case so that Lewinsky could be introduced and Clinton entrapped. This book is an indictment of the New York Times. The world is waiting for the editor and publisher and premier columnist to follow the example of the Catholic Church, and confess its sins. And yet the NYT eminent columnist continues to prod the right wing along with pipe dreams and chimera about another elusive indictment of the First Lady. At this time, the NYT won't even allow a column by author Lyons to be posted on its message boards! Buy this book, read about the complicity of the media in a coup attempt against a popular president against the expressed will of the American people, and let's start rocking the Old Grey Lady. We (the people) WILL rock you.
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Summary: Second read of Conason & Lyons
Review: We spent millions of dollars on an IC investigation involving many investigators & prosecutors ~~ yet, these two men did more substantive research & published it before the IC report could ever manage to get itself written... This book is a summary of politics in Arkansas from 1957 on. It documents the times and the challenges that William Jefferson Clinton went back to Arkansas to face. It's a resource book for historians. If you buy it and read it, be sure to read the footnotes, too. That's where you will find the documentation for the fine research these two authors have done.
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Summary: A Godsend !
Review: Conason and Lyon's painstakingly researched and referenced work establishes as fact the underlying nagging doubts so many of us have had during the seemingly endless manufacture of "scandal" after "scandal" and relentless and shameless hounding of the President and his wife from extremists on the fringe right and the media elite who were willfully co-conspirators to this sad saga of American history.
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Summary: I Lived To See It! ....
Review: Many thanks to Conason and Lyons for this incredibly enlightening 300 plus pages! I'm reading it for the second time and "enjoying" it more... The waiting seemed endless ..but the final product is a gem of the highest caliber.. with proper sourcing and worthy of a Pulitzer for investigative reporting! ... Thank you GL and JC... More?...
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Summary: Required Reading
Review: As the saying goes, "the truth will out" and in this case it's about time. This exhuastively researched work should be required readng for all who doubt that the Clintons, for all their failings, were the subjects of a relentless effort to bring them down. It must be said, however, that The Hunting of the President can at times be downright depressing. The fact that so many people would try so hard, using almost any means possible, to destroy the President of the United States is sad, indeed. That they almost succeeded should give us all pause. By far the most disturbing aspect of this history of political warfare at its' low-down and dirtiest, however, is the complicity of the media in the shameless assault on the truth that came to characterize its' coverage of the so-called Clinton scandals. It was the media which gave baseless rumour and innuendo (call them lies), purveyed by those who were clearly the President's enemies, undeserved credibility. When the rumour mongering that was once the exclusive purview of talk radio spreads to the organs of respectable journalism (e.g. The NY Times and The Wahington Post) we should all worry about the quality of our political discourse. Remember that it was the NY Times' William Safire who called the first lady a 'congenital liar'. In so doing he morphed overnight into the Rush Limbaugh of the printed word and forever tarnished the reputation of that once great newspaper. All journalists and anyone with an interest in the safety of our democracy should read this remarkable book. The producers of the Sunday morning gab fests should require their charges to read it, but they probably won't. It is, after all, a thought provoking piece of work. Conason and Lyons have not just produced the definitive account of this sorry chapter in American history; they have also raised a red flag and we should thank them for the warning. We should also not fail to heed it.
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Summary: Democracy at Risk
Review: Every college class in American history and political science should be assigned this book. It describes in meticulously researched detail how a cabal of people dedicated to bringing down not just a president but our democratic way of life can come so close to achieving its goal. I was shocked and sickened at the revelations so clearly and entertainingly outlined in "The Hunting of the President." To learn how people ranging from two-bit hucksters out for a quick buck, right up to "distinguished" members of the press, Congress and the legal profession conspired to ruin President Clinton at any cost, has made me a more vigilant citizen. The cast of characters that march through the pages of this book reveal them to be a group of fanatics dedicated to replacing democracy in America with their own brand of twisted and dangerous theocracy. And by the way, I'll be taking the "unbiased reporting" of the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal et al with a grain of salt from now on.
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