The Humanity of Hillary

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She does not tell all. The quality of her humanity is glimpsed fleetingly, often by inference. The vivid moments in the book--like the now famous scene when Bill tells her the truth about Monica--are packaged like fragile crystal, surrounded by rhetorical Styrofoam. There are many sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs, that snooze along reflexively: "I wanted to guard the social safety net--health care, education, pensions, wages and jobs--that was in danger of fraying for citizens less able to absorb the changes resulting from the high-tech revolution and a global consumer culture." Living History is, first and last, a political memoir, and the leaden formalities of the genre apply. It is also the memoir of an active--and very ambitious--politician. The Senator is looking to augment her political viability. She reveals that she once went hunting and killed a duck (Chelsea was horrified). She reveals that she met with a bipartisan prayer group (including James Baker's wife Susan). She tosses in lectures about the evils of terrorism and her admiration for the military. Occasionally, she hurls a smoke grenade at Bill's successor: "Despite the occasional serious political differences between the United States and France," she sniffs, "Bill and I maintained a comfortable dialogue with the Chiracs during our years in the White House."

There is very little here that is intellectually or politically adventurous, but that doesn't mean Hillary Clinton isn't a daredevil in her own way. Occasionally she will risk a moment of self-deprecating candor, leavened by dry wit. "I was not the same person who had worn the violet blue gown in 1993," she writes of the second Inauguration. "Nor could I fit into it after four years of White House fare. And I had grown not only older but blonder." When a paparazzo catches her and Bill slow-dancing in their bathing suits on a tropical beach, she admits to being embarrassed by how she looks from the rear. Her sense of femininity is as intense as her feminism; her motherhood and her wonkiness complement and compete against each other. And the interplay of these dancing, dueling factors provides the subtext for the often inexplicable choices she makes.

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2. British Spies: Licensed to be Gay
3. The Great American Yard Sale
4. Obama Sharpens the Message
5. Apple: Battery Problem Caused iPod Overheating
6. A Glossary of Incompetence
7. Spray-On Condoms: Still a Hard Sell
8. Why Musharraf Failed
9. Wounded NATO Grapples with Russia
10. Making an Arguement for Misspelling