First In His Class by David Maraniss Read Free Book Online Page B

Balz, Tom Edsall, Ann Devroy, Mike Isikoff, Sharon LaFraniere, David Von Drehle, Ruth Marcus, Al Kamen, Martha Sherrill, Laura Blumenfeld, Lloyd Grove, Susan Schmidt, Howard Schneider, Gene Weingarten, Donnie Radcliff, and Chuck Babcock. I also learned more about my subject from other journalists: Mark Halperin of ABC , a good friend and invaluable source of information; Adam Nagourney and Bill Nichols of
USA Today;
Walter Shapiro of
Esquire;
Garry Wills of the
New York Review of Books;
Priscilla Painton of
Time;
Ron Brownstein, David Lauter, Cathleen Decker, and William Rempel of the
Los Angeles Times;
Gwen Ifill, Jeff Gerth, Alessandra Stanley, Maureen Dowd, and Michael Kelly of the
New York Times;
Matt Cooper and Donald Baer of
U.S. News;
Jeff Birnbaum of
The Wall Street Journal;
Curtis Wilkie of
The Boston Globe
and John Brummett of the
Arkansas Times.
Of Brummett, Ernest Dumas, Max Brantley, and many of their colleagues in Arkansas journalism, I think it is time for an outsider to say that they did a fine job examining Clinton during his gubernatorial years. The notion that Clinton got an easy ride before the national press corps came along is a presumptuous canard of East Coast journalism.
    During the course of this project, I was lucky to have the help of several brilliant young researchers: foremost Katherine McCarron in Washington, and also Jennifer Pitts in Washington, Sarah Maraniss in Austin, Dan Alexander in London, and Peter Green in Prague. Lucy Shackelford and Elizabeth Hudson of the
Post
were also generous with their research assistance, as was the entire
Post
library staff. Other helpful librarians were Jon K. Reynolds at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library; Ben Primer, archivist at Princeton’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library; Betty Austin, Fulbright archivist at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; and Linda Pine, special collections librarian at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Thanks also to Mary Nell Turner, town historian of Hope, and Inez Cline, her counterpart in Hot Springs.
    Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, in guiding me through my first book, was everything I had hoped a book editor would be: encouraging, coaxing, intelligent, excited, and exacting. Her refined red pen, and the black pen of her calm deputy, Eric Steel, instructed me in the art of long-form narrative. Thanks also to Ann Adelman and Lydia Buechler, first-rate copy editors. Rafe Sagalyn, my agent, was always generous and supportive.
    My work in England was made infinitely easier by the good-humored hospitality of the Harris branch of the Maraniss extended family: Pat Harris, Francis Harris, and Angela Harris. Special thanks to John Harris for paving the way for me at Oxford. Harry Walsh made it possible for a computer illiterate to write a book. Michael Norman, my old dear friend, pushed me to write and kept me going when I doubted myself, as did John Feinstein, Chip Brown, Neil Henry, Richard Cramer, Mike Connolly, Mike Tackett, Elsa Walsh, Steve Amos, Jon Kalb, Don McCarthy, Henry Bryan, Maddy Biais, John Katzenbach, Blaine Harden, and Frank Roloff.
    Two great editors, my parents, Mary and Elliott Maraniss, came bursting out of retirement to devote themselves to this book. It was a joy to decipher my father’s illegible brilliance and to see how my mother could snap a sentence into shape with one precise editor’s mark. Maggie, our sweet old sheepdog, stayed home with me during my long year of writing, making it less lonely. And most of all my thanks go to Linda, who supported me through it all, reading and editing every word late at night on the computer screen, sitting in my wobbly, screws-loose chair. She and Andrew and Sarah are the reasons my wheels did not come off. They are not everything, as the old Packer coach would say, they are the only thing.

INDEX

    abortion, 293, 434, 435
    Abrams, Creighton W., 182
    Achtenberg, Hannah, 126, 129, 146
    Adams, Ruth M., 257
    Addington, Ron, 297-99,