Word: maraniss
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mind-numbing pages that open this 504-page biography of Vince Lombardi bring to mind a howitzer aimed at a sparrow: this is about a football coach, after all. If Clinton biographer Maraniss had begun by telling us briefly that Lombardi arose from an ethos built on the trinity of church, family and a few years as assistant coach at West Point, that would have been enough for us to appreciate what follows. Because once Lombardi reaches Green Bay and the Packers, the book soars like a game-winning field goal...
...DAVID MARANISS Salad days for Clinton biographer, who gets out a quickie book on Bill's big speech...
...endured so many personal and political crises in his life and recovered from every one of them," says David Maraniss, author of the Clinton biography First in His Class. "It's just a habitual recovery process for him now. He starts out being angry, confused and depressed and then slowly tries to find his way." So whether Clinton's acts of public contrition are calculated performances or genuine bulletins from a man in pain--or both, which is always possible--it would be a mistake to see them as signs of a weakening will to fight back...
...Morris around, Clinton doesn't have to devote every waking hour to political calculation. He knows Morris will take care of that. He can concentrate on being the benevolent father that Americans--and his own self-image and strategy--seem to require. As Morris once told Clinton biographer David Maraniss, Clinton needs to be engaged in "some important, valiant fight for the good of the world to lend coherence and structure to his life. When he didn't have those fights, he would eat away at himself, he would become depressed, paranoid, surly and, one suspects, escapist." Morris neutralizes that...
When it comes to making the case for character, both men are blessed and cursed by masterly biographers--David Maraniss for Clinton, Richard Ben Cramer for Dole--whose mesmerizing accounts of their lives will provide the road map to voters and scribblers for years to come. Bob Dole of Russell, Kansas, grew up with a strong family in the kind of small town that Bill Clinton pretends to come from. The Man from Hope actually grew up in Hot Springs, a resort town of healing waters and racetracks and churches built on gambling money. Both had powerhouse working mothers--Virginia...