This book was quite an interesting read. Clinton-bashers are likely to consider it liberal pap, but there are some serious points presented in the book. It is unfortunate that the information found in the book had to be presented in this format and not in the public media. If the media had fulfilled its obligation to provide balanced news instead of only news that sells, today's current events might look very different. The book presents, in my opinion, a good starting point for those wishing to pursue the possibility that there might actually be something resembling a "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton alluded to on the Today Show, January 27, 1998. The book is well written, well documented, and very readable. I would recommend it to those who wish to explore the possibilities of how we have arrived at the pinnacle of Clinton's demise.

This calm, well-researched book takes up where Gene Lyons's irreplaceable "Fools for Scandal" left off. Mr. Retter reveals in patient detail the utter disregard for truth or fairness, and the lack of the most elementary sense of justice that characterize Mr. Clinton's enemies. Mr. Retter indulges in little editorializing--he merely lays out the facts in exhaustive and compelling detail. He documents the fact that these people are organized, well-financed, and entirely without scruple. Mr. Retter does not characterize the people whose behavior he examines; he lets their actions, his facts, and their own quoted words, do the job for him. Every American needs to see the havoc that can be wrought when the media abandon their responsibility for telling the truth. Most of the mainstream media and the Washington pundits have missed the biggest scandal of the decade, but Mr. Retter nails it.

This is an excellent and much-needed book to set the record straight. Much of what Retter has to say about the right-wing conspiracy to get Clinton is now being confirmed by one of that conspiracy's ring-leaders--David Brock of the American Spectator--who just published a book (Blinded by the Right) recanting his former deeds and admitting to fabricating Troopergate and publishing lies about Clinton and Paula Jones.

Halberstam, as ever, writes so well...I am jealous. However, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in this book. While it serves as a good overview of Clinton's foreign policy, it skimps on the first Bush Administration

First, the Persian Gulf War barely gets 20 pages, and it is almost all seen through the lens of the Air Force Colonel (John Warden) who planned the innovative air campaign. This is not really new or scandalous - Gordon and Traynor covered this in "The General's War" and you can find it in other sources. The only other mention you get is how tired Bush was from the Gulf War, and how it prevented him from tackling the Bosnia problem. Overall, Considering the subtitle is "Bush, Clinton and the Generals" Bush gets shorted.

Second, while the portraits of the personalities are vivid, there just isn't anything really new or insightful here. Indeed, there were many vignettes where I felt like I had read this somewhere before. Bob Woodward's "The Commanders" is still the definitive Gulf War decision-making work, Elizabeth Drew's "On the Edge" covers Clinton's decision making shortcomings, Ivo Daalder's "Getting to Dayton" covers Bosnia u1p to 1995; Daalder and O'Hanlon's "Winning Ugly" has everything about Kosovo.

As a student of international relations, my standards are a little higher. This book is useful to the extent it consolidates a lot of existing work, but it falls just a little short of being really deep or groundbreaking. Not even close to "Best and the Brightest."

David Halberstam has written another excellent book. Those who have read his earlier volumes such as "The Best and Brightest", "The Reckoning", and "The Fifties" will be at home with his extensive research and terrific insights. Those who don't like books that are extensively researched and exhaustively analyzed might prefer to read something else.

"War in a Time of Peace" is about the unpleasant subject of Bosnia and Kosovo. Halberstam reviews the personalities and the events. Two administrations dealt with these problems, that of George Bush Sr. and that of Bill Clinton. While both administrations had many capable people working for them, both made numerous mistakes in their handling of this problem.

Halberstam does a good job of educating those who don't know exactly what was going on in this part of the world and why. Many Americans still don't understand what really happened in the Balkans. This book is a great way for them to inform themselves.

Halberstam clearly believes that an initial show of force against Yugoslavian President Slobadan Milosevic could have stopped much of this tragedy. The failure to use force initially, despite widespread reports of genocide and killing, can best be explained as caution which resulted from the Vietnam experience. Often, military leaders were the most reluctant to support the use of force against Milosevic and the Serbs.

At times, Halberstam overestimates the importance of the Balkans to the United States. Its a tragedy when you look at what has happened to the people who live there. But, a grim reality is that the American people--living many thousands of miles away--could not be expected to have more than minimal interest in this feud which has gone for centuries. Part of our unwillingness to become involved stemmed from the Vietnam Experience. The other part of it stemmed from the relative lack of importance the Balkans has to our foreign policy or economy.

Be prepared for alot of background on the individual civilian and military leaders in place in both the Bush and Clinton Administrations. Its fascinating reading, but a little hard to keep one person straight from another at times.

This is a highly informative and well written book.

I know from reading other reviews that there are those who will complain over various failings of this book. Many of those complaints I agree with, at least to some extent. However, to carp about this book is to miss the purpose of the enterprise. This is an excellent overview of American foreign policy, and those who were responsible for it, in a period of time when foreign policy was the last thing on the minds of everyone, including the President of the United States.

Halberstam gives a very readable account of the events leading up to and during the Clinton presidency. He vividly captures the personalities involved, and compellingly shows how little attention was being paid, how many competing interests existed and how fitful was our concentration on the important issues of the post-Cold War world.

It is entertaining, perplexing and scary to think that events of the magnitude of world affairs over this period of time were being attended to in such an intermittent and cavalier fashion.

Well worth reading!

This is an important "anthology" of the abuses of the Clinton-Gore administration. To regular Bovard readers, it does cover some of the material that his other works have detailed but is a disturbing litany of statist, unconstitutional, and power hungry moves by this administration. What this summary does is put in greater perspective the actions of the Clinton-Gore administration that range from seemingly unrelated domestic policy such as HUD and farm loans programs to foreign policy such as the WTO and the Serbian war.

The common thread is a executive branch gobbling ever increasingly amount of control over normal people's lives while dishing out intellectually contorted reasoning appealing to people's emotions and fears. Intentions are always more important than results, activity more desired than progress, the end always justifies the means, and the truth is simply a tool to be used, warped, or discarded to advance one's aims. When we are constantly told that "it's all old news" or "just about sex", the casual political observer can't help but sit back and wonder about the lies we don't know about. This is what the book is all about.

I recommend you read the one star review from the person from California ("Hatred, not analysis"). This is an ironic message that illustrates all that the Clinton administration wants you to swallow. The reviewer reminds you that any dissenting opinion is simply "right wing hatred". He/she -- knows -- that the author has his facts wrong but won't tell you how they know this nor site any examples of these errors ("just trust me..."). What the Clinton-Gore apologists want us to believe is that any administration discretion is just a rare, isolated brush fire that really isn't a big issue, has been dealt with and there's nothing to worry about except when one steps back and examines the forest they find that the entire landscape is in flames.

Bovard provides us with the big picture regarding the policies of the Clinton Administration, whereas the media has only looked at certain things in isolation. Coming in the wake of the Danforth Commission on Waco, which claims to absolve the government of any fault in the death of the Branch Davidians, Bovard devotes a chapter of his book to the incident. Like many people at the time of the conflagration, I was one of those Americans who thought, "Well, they were a bunch of religious fanatics, whattaya expect?" Therefore, it should be rather sobering to read in "feeling your pain" that BATF agents could have arrested Koresh at any time when he went into town prior to the raid, and that at one point Koresh even invited the ATF to come and inspect the compound, but they refused the invitation. Instead, they opted for a military raid to be covered by the media to bolster the agency's image in the minds of the American people. A lost tv cameraman inadvertently tipped the Davidians off, but knowing this, the ATF tried to storm the compound anyway. The rest, as we know, is history.

Civil libertarians should be troubled by the attempts of the administration to limit privacy over our internet commmunications and in banking. The book also gives a good summary of why the military intervention in Kosovo was such a blunder. Interestingly, I just read in the paper this morning that an American serviceman pleaded guilty to raping and murdering an ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo. Is this what Clinton meant by a humanitarian intervention? Other areas covered include the War on Drugs, agricultural policy, HUD abuses and gun control efforts.

I had recently read Bovard's previous book, Freedom In Chains, which I gave 5 stars. One of the weaknesses of "feeling your pain" is that Bovard recycles some of the same material. There are even entire paragraphs that look like they were cut and pasted from "Freedom". But since some of the issues he looks at were the same, I suppose we cannot expect him to reword everything he said. This book also differs from Freedom In Chains thematically. Whereas "Freedom" examined the concepts of freedom and liberty and the conflict between liberty and statism in a philosophical framework, his current work looks at how the Clinton Administration's policies have curtailed or threatened to curtail our liberties in a number of policy areas.

While some of Bovard's detractors may dismiss "feeling your pain" as just another Clinton bashing book, Bovard acknowledges that the Republicans would not have had a much better track record on many of these issues if they controlled the White House. This book is a must for anyone who wants ammunition to argue with a die hard Clinton partisan.

James Bovard's "Feeling Your Pain" covers much of the same territory and the same abuses as his other excellent book, "Lost Rights." Nevertheless, "Feeling Your Pain" still is a very good book, especially in the chapters covering the abuses under Americorps. Bovard basically accuses Americorps of being a liberal indoctrination program which provides little to the communities in which they serve. His chapters on the abuses of the ADA and farm subsidies are also very interesting and show the extent of government waste in America.

I personally feel that Bovard should also be commended for continually reminding his readers about the abuses of civil liberties and human rights which happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Bovard's chapters on these almost forgotten scandals parallel those in "Lost Rights," although the chapter on Waco is more in depth to the aftermath of Waco. Bovard also offers extensive documentation of his resources in case readers want to verify Bovard's conclusions.

Basically, the only reason I am giving this book only four stars is because it covers the same material as "Lost Rights." Nevertheless, it still an excellent book from one of America's best liberatarian writers.

Well I liked Clinton. So when I found this book which claims to bash him I was curious about its content. So I ordered it, and read it again and again. Since last September Knowles seemed to already reveal its revelation in an odd way. Knowles suggested a very divided, and polarized culture only appealing to minorities. Clinton overlook things which unified America. Instead Clinton became only interested in re-election. His justice department refused to investage foreign nationals who resided in America. Clinton mislead America and history and Knowles book shows his betrial.

This is the diary of James Bennett, a young man who enlisted in the U.S. Dragoons in 1849 and served 7 years on the frontier at various posts in New Mexico. He encountered many figures known to history and traveled widely over the frontier from Texas to Wyoming to California.

Bennett's service saw him involved in battles with Indians, surveying the Gadsden Purchase and involved in the life of communities where American and Mexican cultures intermingled.

This book is a must for anyone interested in military history or life on the frontier prior to the Civil War

Krasna Amerika -- the title translates to "Beautiful America" after lyrics in a Czech waltz -- is an American story in every sense of the word. But it covers an entire ethnic group.

If your only knowlege of Texas Czech culture is a kolache, or a cold beer at Westfest on Labor Day, here's a book that will introduce you to one of the most important, and sometimes most overlooked, ethnic groups in the Lone Star State.

This is a colorful story of how Moravians, Bohemians and others who lived in what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia -- places where, as one immigrant said, there was "too many people and not enough land" -- made new lives for themselves in the new world. Starting about 1848, they made their way to Galveston and to Texas, even though their ties to the old country remained strong until the second world war. This unique culture, its rich language and heritage, is explained in detail.

Unlike the few paragraphs afforded to the Czechs in most Texas history books, this work will give a complete and vivid picture of a hard working, prospering people.

A very dry, self glorifying effort at expanding his image, Jim McDougal's book is as boorish as the man himself perhaps was. We were saved his testimony in the Grand Jury, perhaps for the better. Truly an old boy who liked to make himself bigger than he really was.

It is only tempered by the shabby treatment that Jim McDougal received not only at the hands of his friend, Bill Clinton, but also long time political ally, Govenor Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton's sucessor. Govenor Tucker, like McDougal, went to jail. Clinton did not & went on to screw many others, figuratively & literally. Bill Clinton's charisma was such that long after it made any sense, McDougal, & especially his wife, Susan retained a great deal of personal affection for the president. Politically, being a "yellow dog" democrat, McDougal could do no less than support both the president & the govenor.
The political stories fronm an Arkansas insider are light & funny. Some universally true about politicas & others peculiar to Arkansas.
The legal morass that McDougal found himself & tries to explain make for rough going in places but these segments are brief. Any good ol' boy or political junkie will like this book. As to the veracity of this book, Mr. McDougal knew he was dying & in fact died before it's publication. Most people do not wish to leave this world with a lie. He had considerable help from Curtis Wilkie, a professional writer, which probably helped him keep it real. Lloyd James' narration made it seem as if it actually was the voice of Jim McDougal.

Curtis Wilkie's name appears in smaller case type below that of Jim McDougal's on the cover, but there should be no doubt in any reader's mind that without Wilkie's dogged pursuit of the truth and his well-honed journalist's credentials this would be just another publisher's attempt to capitalize on the Clinton scandalmongering machine. Fortunately, Wilkie successfully navigates McDougal's obfuscations and produces a fascinating account of McDougal's sad life and role in one of the late-20th century's seminal political events. Required reading for anyone interested in southern-or national-politics.

This is the "Absolutely, positively, without a doubt everything you want to know about Whitewater" book. I really do not think there is one shred of info left out, the Independent Prosecutor would be hard pressed to put together such a detailed and complete history. I doubt even the combined recollection of all the people involved know as much about Whitewater as what is in this book. That should give you a pretty good idea of what the book is about, the author does through in a little about the campaign, travel gate, Vince Foster and a few other early Clinton scandals, but the true heart of the book is the Whitewater investigation.

The book does not flow as quickly as his last book "Den of Thieves" nor is it as gripping. It is, however, a very well constructed and researched book. If you are interested in this particular issue then I have not come across a book with a better non-partisan telling of this story. If you are looking for an overall detailed account of the election or the first four years in the Clinton White House I would suggest the Woodward books "The Agenda" and "The Choice" and the Elizabeth Drew book "Showdown: The Struggle between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House".

When I opened this book I was hoping for all the juicy details on the Presidents dirty deeds in Ark. In some ways I got what I wanted and I didn't. The book has a ring of truth and fairness about it. On the one hand Stewart lets the President off on the Whitewater charges but spills the beans on all the other dirty little secrets. Those who want to see Mr Clinton fall will be disappointed with this writing and those want to see the President exeronated will also be disappointed. But then again the truth is usually disappointing. Read the book, it's a good read. But be prepared to wade through a lot of detail to get to the truth.

If anyone is still interested in what the fuss was all about, they should read this. Blood Sport is written totally objectively and deals with all the players involved in every Clinton scandal except for Monica, which broke after publication.

The book details the business partnerships the Clintons had with the McDougals from the 1970's on the 1990's and its fall out. The story stretches from Arkansas to the White House and even goes a bit into the suicide of Vince Foster.

Stewart makes no judgments as to whether any impropriety occurred in any business dealings, so this is a good place to start for an objective reader who wants to make up his own mind about the whole sordid mess.