Books

Writing the life of a controversial person whose career is evolving and who refuses to cooperate is usually a biographer's nightmare. I know; I've done it.

It turns out that Carl Bernstein, investigative reporting icon and not-so-successful biographer in the past, has written one of the best unauthorized biographies I've ever read about a living person.

New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. have succeeded less spectacularly, but still have produced a biography worth reading.

The biggest objective difference is that Mr. Bernstein pretty much stops with the year 2000, so readers who want to learn about Ms. Clinton as U.S. senator must go elsewhere. That elsewhere could be Gerth-Van Natta; they devote nearly half their coverage to her Senate years.

The most vital subjective difference between the biographies is the skill of the overall portrayal. Mr. Bernstein masterfully explains Ms. Clinton as a complicated human being; Mr. Gerth and Mr. Van Natta for the most part fail to make her come alive on the printed page – in fairness to them, always a difficult mission.

After reading Mr. Bernstein, I know Hillary the way I might know an older, brainy sister. After reading Gerth-Van Natta, I feel as if I know about Hillary, the way I might if my information came from the younger brother of her former boyfriend.

One of the most striking differences between the books is the portrayal of Ms. Clinton's father, Hugh Rodham. Mr. Gerth and Mr. Van Natta portray him as a good father and suggest Ms. Clinton grew up in a serene environment. Mr. Bernstein shows Mr. Rodham as "a sour, unfulfilled man whose children suffered his relentless, demeaning sarcasm and misanthropic inclination, endured his embarrassing parsimony, and silently accepted his humiliation and verbal abuse of their mother."

Mr. Bernstein's summation of Hillary as she leaves her family home in Park Ridge, Ill., and heads to Wellesley College is revealing, and also a harbinger:

"... almost all the essential elements – and contradictions – of her adult character could be glimpsed: the keen intelligence and ability to stretch it, the ambition and anger, the idealism and acceptance of humiliation, the messianism and sense of entitlement, the attraction to charismatic men and indifference to conventional feminine fashion, the seriousness of purpose and quickness to judgment, the puritan sensibility and surprising vulnerability, the chronic impatience and aversion to personal confrontation, the insistence on financial independence and belief in public service, the tenacious attempts at absolute control and, perhaps above all, the balm, beacon, and refuge of religion."

The passage contains lots of characteristics, some of them seemingly contradictory. That is actually a strength of Mr. Bernstein's biography. He does not treat Ms. Clinton in a reductionist manner.

Mr. Bernstein's chapter about Ms. Clinton at Wellesley is filled with evidence that she was already a leader, a woman people followed because of her brains, hard work and charisma. After Hillary meets Bill Clinton at Yale Law School, however, the biography changes, as it must.

Mr. Bernstein demonstrates how Hillary and Bill formed a mutually advantageous partnership. They knew, against odds that must have seemed ridiculous to everybody else, that together they would reach the White House.

Her willingness to back him despite his sex addiction to other women nearly defies understanding, because the womanizing made electability so much harder than it needed to be. Mr. Bernstein, through his skillful interviewing of individuals who observed the Clintons up close, helps make sense of the situation.

Neither book showered breaking news upon me. Still, I found Mr. Bernstein's section about Mr. Clinton's romance during the late 1980s with business executive Marilyn Jo Jenkins astounding. According to Mr. Bernstein's sources, Bill would have divorced Hillary to live with Ms. Jenkins. Hillary would not accept a divorce, however, partly because of her devotion to rearing daughter Chelsea in a two-parent family.

Mr. Gerth and Mr. Van Natta show their skills as veteran investigative reporters when they dig into an arrangement between Cornell University and Ms. Clinton to provide Senate staffing that would help her with agricultural issues. They write that the addition of Lee Telega to her Senate staff with financial assistance from the university constituted an "apparent violation of Senate rules."

Their account of Sen. Clinton is evenhanded – they found lots to criticize, lots to praise.

The biographers avoid predictions about how well Hillary Clinton would do as president. That is unknowable, so they are wise to avoid prognostication.

Steve Weinberg is a freelance journalist in Columbia, Mo., and the author of Armand Hammer: The Untold Story.

The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Carl Bernstein

(Knopf, $27.95)

The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.

(Little, Brown, $29.99)

ARCHIVES: Search for more stories on this and other topics | Search Tips

SUBSCRIBE: Get The Dallas Morning News delivered to your home