When George Washington decided not to seek a third term, he initiated what would be a longstanding concern and challenge for former presidents: what to do with their post-presidential lives. The retirement of James Madison in 1817 initiated active ex-presidencies as he was drawn into political controversies; since then, the post-presidency has become an office unto itself. Burton Kaufman's unique history of that "office" traces the evolving roles of former presidents from Washington to Clinton, examining the lives of the thirty-one who lived for at least two years after leaving office. He marks the transition of the ex-presidency from the 18th-century republican ideal-that of politically disinterested private citizens engaging briefly in public service before returning to private life-to one in which former presidents became increasingly active. Beginning with John Quincy Adams's post-presidential election to Congress, former presidents no longer maintained the pretense of abstaining from active participation in the nation's political affairs. Today the bar has been set by Jimmy Carter, whom historians have regarded as a middling president but who may well have established a new paradigm for ex-presidents. Kaufman also reveals how the post-presidency has evolved since World War II into a big business, with ex-presidents raking in millions of dollars through book sales, lectures, and corporate employment. Drawing extensively on primary sources, including presidential papers, Kaufman maintains that this evolution has followed a path similar to that of the presidency itself. He shows that most have had fascinating post-presidential careers filled with both accomplishment and failure, and that in some cases their lives after leaving office were as important historically as their careers as president and give new insights into their personalities. Kaufman's study offers an absorbing look at how and why changes in the post-presidency have occurred over the two centuries that will fascinate any aficionado of American history. More than thirty photos—from Harry Truman taking his daily constitutional to Richard Nixon rehabilitating his reputation—grace the text.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "There are no second acts in American lives", but more and more, our former presidents are proving him wrong. No longer fading into the background upon leaving the highest office in the land, ex-presidents perform valuable services as elder statesmen and international emissaries - and by pursuing their own agendas. From Eisenhower taking Kennedy to the woodshed (literally) on the Bay of Pigs crisis, to Carter earning the Nobel Peace Prize, to Bush Sr. and Clinton joining forces in an unlikely partnership for tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief, the author examines the increasingly important roles that former presidents assume in our nation and throughout the world. Through interviews with former presidents, first ladies, family members, friends, and staffers, the author also delves into the very human stories that play out as the modern ex-presidents - from Truman to Clinton - adjust to life after the White House and attempt to shape their historical legacies. In this, the first narrative history of the modern post-presidency, Mark K. Updegrove makes a refreshingly unique contribution to literature on the American presidents.

Choice Outstanding Academic Book. As America’s first truly postmodern president, Bill Clinton experienced both great highs and stunning lows in office that will shape the future course of American politics. Clinton will forever be remembered as the first elected president to be impeached, but will his tarnished legacy have lasting effects on America’s political system? Including the conflict in Kosovo, the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, and new developments in the 2000 presidential campaign, The Postmodern Presidency is the most comprehensive and current assessment of Bill Clinton’s presidency available in print. The Postmodern Presidency examines Clinton’s role in redefining the institution of the presidency, and his affect on future presidents’ economic and foreign policies. The contributors highlight the president’s unprecedented courtship of public opinion; how polls affected policy; how the president gained “celebrity” status; how Clinton’s “postmodern” style of public presidency helped him survive the 1994 elections and impeachment; and how all of this might impact future presidents. This new text also demonstrates how the Clinton presidency changed party politics in the public and in Congress, with long-term implications and costs to both Republicans and his own Democratic party, while analyzing Clinton’s effect on the 1990s “culture wars,” the politics and importance of gender, and the politics and policy of race. This text is a must for anyone who studies, teaches, or has an interest in the American presidency and politics.

The American President is an enthralling account of American presidential actions from the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 to Bill Clinton's last night in office in January 2001. William Leuchtenburg, one of the great presidential historians of the century, portrays each of the presidents in a chronicle sparkling with anecdote and wit. Leuchtenburg offers a nuanced assessment of their conduct in office, preoccupations, and temperament. His book presents countless moments of high drama: FDR hurling defiance at the "economic royalists" who exploited the poor; ratcheting tension for JFK as Soviet vessels approach an American naval blockade; a grievously wounded Reagan joking with nurses while fighting for his life. This book charts the enormous growth of presidential power from its lowly state in the late nineteenth century to the imperial presidency of the twentieth. That striking change was manifested both at home in periods of progressive reform and abroad, notably in two world wars, Vietnam, and the war on terror. Leuchtenburg sheds light on presidents battling with contradictory forces. Caught between maintaining their reputation and executing their goals, many practiced deceits that shape their image today. But he also reveals how the country's leaders pulled off magnificent achievements worthy of the nation's pride.

“A rich, believable portrait of a master politician out of office: needy, rivalrous, thin-skinned, proud, hot-tempered.” —The New York Review of Books Updated in 2017 and hailed as, “engrossing…detailed and intimate” (Publishers Weekly), veteran political journalist Joe Conason’s Man of the World brings you along with Bill Clinton, as the forty-second president blazes new paths in his post-presidential career. It is unlike the second career of any other president: “Bill Clinton” is a global brand, rising from the dark days of his White House departure to become one of the most popular names in the world. In his “deeply researched” (The New York Times Book Review) Man of the World, Joe Conason describes how that happened, examining Clinton’s achievements, his failures, his motivations, and his civilian life. He explains why Clinton’s ambitions for the world continue to inspire (and infuriate). Conason, who has covered Clinton for twenty years, interviewed him many times for this book—as well as Hillary and Chelsea and many of his friends, aides, rivals, and supporters. He has travelled with Clinton to Africa, Haiti, Israel, and across America. Conason’s “often absorbing chronicle captures the energy and charisma of the former president as he…finds a mission in his philanthropic work in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere” (Kirkus Reviews). Man of the World—starring the one and only Bill Clinton—tells the engrossing story of an extraordinary man who is still seeking to do good in the world.

The president of larger-than-life ambitions and appetites whose term defined America at the close of the twentieth century Bill Clinton: a president of contradictions. He was a Rhodes Scholar and a Yale Law School graduate, but he was also a fatherless child from rural Arkansas. He was one of the most talented politicians of his age, but he inspired enmity of such intensity that his opponents would stop at nothing to destroy him. He was the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to win two successive presidential elections, but he was also the first president since Andrew Johnson to be impeached. In this incisive biography of America’s forty-second president, Michael Tomasky examines Clinton’s eight years in office, a time often described as one of peace and prosperity, but in reality a time of social and political upheaval, as the culture wars grew ever more intense amid the rise of the Internet (and with it, online journalism and blogging); military actions in Somalia, Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo; standoffs at Waco and Ruby Ridge; domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City; and the rise of al-Qaeda. It was a time when Republicans took control of Congress and a land deal gone bad turned into a constitutional crisis, as lurid details of a sitting president’s sexual activities became the focus of public debate. Tomasky’s clear-eyed assessment of Clinton’s presidency offers a new perspective on what happened, what it all meant, and what aspects continue to define American politics to this day. In many ways, we are still living in the Age of Clinton.

All Too Human is a new-generation political memoir, written from the refreshing perspective of one who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age. At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's side during the presidential campaign of 1992, & for the next five years he was rarely more than a step away from the president & his other advisers at every important moment of the first term. What Liar's Poker did to Wall Street, this book will do to politics. It is an irreverent & intimate portrait of how the nation's weighty business is conducted by people whose egos & idiosyncrasies are no sturdier than anyone else's. Including sharp portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell, & scores of others, as well as candid & revelatory accounts of the famous debacles & triumphs of an administration that constantly went over the top, All Too Human is, like its author, a brilliant combination of pragmatic insight & idealism. It is destined to be the most important & enduring book to come out of the Clinton administration.

A retrospective assessment of the Clinton presidency and its influence offers an illuminating analysis of the key personal, political, and policy decisions of the administration, assessing Bill Clinton's leadership style, his successes and failures, and the long-term implications of the Clinton presidency. 65,000 first printing.

Here, from Bill Clinton, is a call to action. Giving is an inspiring look at how each of us can change the world. First, it reveals the extraordinary and innovative efforts now being made by companies and organizations—and by individuals—to solve problems and save lives both “down the street and around the world.” Then it urges us to seek out what each of us, “regardless of income, available time, age, and skills,” can do to help, to give people a chance to live out their dreams. Bill Clinton shares his own experiences and those of other givers, representing a global flood tide of nongovernmental, nonprofit activity. These remarkable stories demonstrate that gifts of time, skills, things, and ideas are as important and effective as contributions of money. From Bill and Melinda Gates to a six-year-old California girl named McKenzie Steiner, who organized and supervised drives to clean up the beach in her community, Clinton introduces us to both well-known and unknown heroes of giving. Among them: Dr. Paul Farmer, who grew up living in the family bus in a trailer park, vowed to devote his life to giving high-quality medical care to the poor and has built innovative public health-care clinics first in Haiti and then in Rwanda; a New York couple, in Africa for a wedding, who visited several schools in Zimbabwe and were appalled by the absence of textbooks and school supplies. They founded their own organization to gather and ship materials to thirty-five schools. After three years, the percentage of seventh-graders who pass reading tests increased from 5 percent to 60 percent;' Oseola McCarty, who after seventy-five years of eking out a living by washing and ironing, gave $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to endow a scholarship fund for African-American students; Andre Agassi, who has created a college preparatory academy in the Las Vegas neighborhood with the city’s highest percentage of at-risk kids. “Tennis was a stepping-stone for me,” says Agassi. “Changing a child’s life is what I always wanted to do”; Heifer International, which gave twelve goats to a Ugandan village. Within a year, Beatrice Biira’s mother had earned enough money selling goat’s milk to pay Beatrice’s school fees and eventually to send all her children to school—and, as required, to pass on a baby goat to another family, thus multiplying the impact of the gift. Clinton writes about men and women who traded in their corporate careers, and the fulfillment they now experience through giving. He writes about energy-efficient practices, about progressive companies going green, about promoting fair wages and decent working conditions around the world. He shows us how one of the most important ways of giving can be an effort to change, improve, or protect a government policy. He outlines what we as individuals can do, the steps we can take, how much we should consider giving, and why our giving is so important. Bill Clinton’s own actions in his post-presidential years have had an enormous impact on the lives of millions. Through his foundation and his work in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, he has become an international spokesperson and model for the power of giving. “We all have the capacity to do great things,” President Clinton says. “My hope is that the people and stories in this book will lift spirits, touch hearts, and demonstrate that citizen activism and service can be a powerful agent of change in the world.”