First in His Class; A Biography of Bill Clinton

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 512 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Stray red mark (light) on front flyleaf. DJ has some soiling and a small tear top edge rear DJ. David Maraniss, born 1949, is an American journalist and author, currently serving as an associate editor for The Washington Post. He received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1993 for his coverage of then-candidate Bill Clinton during the 1992 United States presidential election. Maraniss received an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the Spring commencement ceremony on May 16, 2014. Maraniss began his journalism career as a high school student in Madison, Wisconsin, where he covered antiwar protests and high school football for a local daily newspaper. He joined The Washington Post in 1977 and has served it in various capacities since. The Post assigned him the job of biographer for their coverage of 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. Derived from a Kirkus review: This illuminating, unauthorized biography sticks to the facts to draw a sharp personal and political portrait of the man who became the first baby boomer to be elected President. Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter Maraniss uses his skills to dig out the events of Clinton's life from childhood until the day he declared for the presidency. Maraniss interviewed some 400 people, all of whom spoke on the record. The result is a balanced account of Clinton's enormous strengths and weaknesses --a rich narrative crammed with abundant detail and an appropriate amount of interpretative analysis. Maraniss clearly shows that from his days as a teen-aged politico in high school and college, through his years at Oxford University and Yale Law School, and throughout his Arkansas political career. The author offers revealing looks at many other aspects of Clinton's life, especially his childhood, his coming of age in England, his handling of the draft during the late 1960s, and his political career in Arkansas.