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CONT:

On Vince Foster's Suicide:

Page 531: In a phone conversation on the night before Foster's death, Clinton says, "I did my best ... to persuade him to shrug off the [negative Wall Street] Journal editorials. The Journal was a fine paper, but not that many people read its editorials. ... Vince listened, but I could tell I hadn't convinced him. He had never been subject to public criticism before, and like so many people when they're pounded in the press for the first time, he seemed to think that everyone had read the negative things said about him and believed them."

On George Stephanopoulos' Bad Ideas:

Page 389: When Clinton's experiences with the draft came under attack during the 1992 primary: "George was curled up on the floor, practically in tears." Stephanopolous suggests withdrawing from the race.

Page 499: After the FBI raid on David Koresh's compound went haywire, Clinton says, "I knew I needed to speak to the press and take responsibility for the fiasco. ... George Stephanopoulos urged me to wait." When that decision played badly: "I didn't blame George. He was young and cautious and had given me his honest, albeit mistaken, opinion."

Page 573: Stephanopoulos, among others, advocates requesting a special prosecutor to defuse the media's interest in the Whitewater story. "It was the worst presidential decision I ever made, wrong on the fact, wrong on the law, wrong on the politics, wrong for the presidency and the Constitution."

Who Quashed Health-Care Reform?:

Page 482: Not Hillary. Clinton took flak for putting her in charge: "When it came to the First Lady's role, it seemed Washington was more conservative than Arkansas." But he thought she "knew a lot about the issue ... had time to do the job right, and ... would be able to be an honest broker."

Page 547: Bob Dole, who turns down an opportunity to collaborate with the Clintons on a health-care proposal.

Page 577: Bob Dole, who "would decide to kill any health reform."

Page 594: Interest groups that ran false ads bashing the plan.

Page 601: Newt Gingrich, who vowed to make "health-care reform unpassable."

Page 601: William Kristol, who sent Republican leaders a memo "urging them to kill health-care reform" because successful Clinton legislation would pose a "serious threat to the Republican Party."

Page 602: Bob Dole because "he was running for President."

Who's Responsible for the '90s Boom?:

Page 537: Clinton and his team. "Our bond market gambit would work beyond our wildest dreams, bringing lower interest rates, a soaring stock market, and a booming economy."

On His Conservative Critics:

Page 336: Although Bill Bennett "once inscribed a book to me with the words, 'To Bill Clinton, the Democrat who makes sense,' he apparently came to believe that either he had been wrong or I had lost whatever sense I had when he wrote those words."

Page 586: "William Safire, the New York Times columnist who had been a speechwriter for Nixon and Agnew, and who seemed determined to prove that all their successors were just as bad as they were, was especially avid in his unsupported assertions that Vince's death was linked to illegal conduct by Hillary and me."

On Other Presidents Who Got Off Easy :

Page 345: Iran-Contra "might have led to [Reagan's] impeachment had the Democrats been half as ruthless as Newt Gingrich."

Page 405: Jefferson had "weakness for women"; Washington faced "criticism of his expense accounts during the Revolutionary War"; Lincoln suffered "debilitating episodes of depression. ... If he had to run under modern conditions, we might have been deprived of our greatest president."

On Mixing Fitness With Fast Food:

Page 444: "I went jogging with Chelsea downtown and stopped at McDonald's for a cup of water, as I had countless times before."

Page 449: On another post-jog visit to Mickey D's: "I got a cup of coffee."

On Boris Yeltsin:

Page 508: "Whenever anyone made a snide remark about Yeltsin's drinking, I was reminded of what Lincoln allegedly said when Washington snobs made the same criticism of General Grant: ... 'Find out what he drinks, and give it to the other generals.' "

The Lewinsky Affair:

Page 773: During his deposition in the Paula Jones case, Clinton complains that Jones' lawyers ask only general questions about his sexual behavior. If they had just asked more specific questions, "I would have answered them truthfully, but I would have hated it."

Page 773: Clinton recounts his liaisons with Monica Lewinsky in language far less graphic than the Starr Report. "Inappropriate encounter" and "15 minutes" is about as hot as it gets.

Page 775: Clinton insists that the Monica cover-up was his only lie (a recurring theme): "Since 1991 I had been called a liar about everything under the sun when in fact I had been honest in my public life and financial affairs, as all the investigations would show. Now I was misleading everyone about my personal failings."

Page 774: The book's sole reference to Matt Drudge: "The [Lewinsky] story first emerged publicly early on the eighteenth [of January 1998], on an Internet site." David Brock nabs three brief mentions; Michael Isikoff, none.

On the Couch:

Page 800: On Aug. 15, 1998, Clinton awakens Hillary and tells her about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. She reels "as if I had punched her in the gut."

Page 803: The post-Monica blues: "When there were no cameras around, my wife and daughter were barely speaking to me. I spent the first couple of days alternating between begging for forgiveness and planning the strikes on al Qaeda. At night Hillary would go up to bed and I would sleep on the couch."

Page 811: Bill and Hillary attend counseling. "Meanwhile, I was still sleeping on a couch, this one in the small living room that adjoined our bedroom. I slept on that old couch for two months or more. I got a lot of reading, thinking, and work done, and the couch was pretty comfortable, but I hoped I wouldn't be on it forever."

Page 846: Sometime around February 1999, Clinton returns to the boudoir. "I almost wound up being grateful to my tormentors: they were probably the only people who could have made me look good to Hillary again. I even got off the couch."

Secrets of the Clintonites:

Page 489: They don't like touchy-feely games. At an early administration retreat at Camp David, "we were supposed to bond by sitting in a group, taking turns telling something about ourselves others didn't know." Clinton reveals he was mocked for being chubby as a child. Lloyd Bentsen and Robert Rubin refuse to participate.

Page 660: Dick Morris could be "difficult to deal with," had "off-the-wall ideas from time to time," and tended to "go around established White House procedures." And he gets caught with a prostitute.

Page 701: Madeleine Albright uses the word "cojones" in a speech about Cuba policy.

Page 738: Clinton reads George Stephanopoulos' All Too Human: "Until I read his memoir, I had no idea how difficult the pressure-packed years had been for him, or how hard he had been on himself, and me."

Page 917: Larry Summers reports meeting "some guy named Bono—just one name—dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and big sunglasses. He came to see me about debt relief, and he knows what he's talking about." (Bonus Bono item: On Page 688, the singer gives Clinton a book of William Butler Yeats' plays autographed by Yeats and ... Bono.)

Secrets of the Gingrichites:

Page 633: Newt Gingrich becomes House Speaker after the GOP's runaway victory in the 1994 congressional elections. Clinton fumes, "[W]e weren't part of the culture Gingrich wanted to dominate America: the self-righteous, condemning, Absolute Truth-claiming dark side of white southern conservatism."

Page 634: He doesn't mean that: "I didn't want to demonize Gingrich and his crowd as they had done to us."

Page 682: Dick Armey, from Texas, "was a big man who always wore cowboy boots and seemed to be in a constant state of agitation." Armey admits that Clinton's "Mediscare" ads—which charged the Republicans with cutting Medicare and Medicaid—have succeeded in terrifying his mother-in-law.

Page 683: Gingrich says he shut down the federal government because Clinton snubbed him on the plane after Yitzhak Rabin's funeral and made him exit the plane through a rear door. "You just wonder, where is their sense of manners?" Gingrich grouses. Clinton says the back entrance was simply closer to Gingrich's car.

Page 778: In February 1998, Hillary sits with Gingrich at a state dinner. Newt says the charges against her husband are "ludicrous," "meaningless," and weren't "going anywhere."

Page 824: After Gingrich suffers a humiliating defeat in the 1998 congressional elections, a Clinton aide asks him why he's pushing impeachment. "Because we can," he replies.

Page 845: A Republican senator secretly funnels information to the White House about the GOP's attempt to nail down impeachment votes. Assuming that the leaker is someone who voted against both articles of impeachment, it's probably Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Jim Jeffords, Arlen Specter, or John Chafee.

Conspiracy Theories:

Page 556: In 1993,* "I read a list of our accomplishments to a group from Arkansas who were visiting the White House. When I finished, one of my home staters said, 'There must be a conspiracy to keep this a secret; we don't hear about any of this.' Part of the fault was mine. ... In politics, if you don't toot your own horn, it usually stays untooted."

Page 689: At a ceremony marking the end the Bosnian war, Clinton listens as Slobodan Milosevic peddles Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and insists the U.S. government has "been successful in covering it up."

Page 776: On the Today show, a clueless Hillary blames a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal entanglements. Clinton, who knows the truth, writes, "seeing Hillary defend me made me even more ashamed about what I had done."

Page 642: Gingrich's Republican Congress opposes big government and international air travel. "A surprising number of them didn't even have passports," Clinton reports.

Page 822: Clinton notes, apropos of nothing, that it has recently come to light that Thomas Jefferson fathered several children with slave Sally Hemmings.

Page 914: In the middle of tense Middle East peace negotiations, Ehud Barak nearly dies after choking on a peanut.

Page 939-41: Clinton says he issued too few pardons on his way out the door—he wishes he had given passes to Webb Hubbell and Jim Guy Tucker. Of Marc Rich, whose ex-wife was a supporter: "I may have made a mistake, at least in the way I allowed the case to come to my attention, but I made the decision based on the merits."

I Didn't Cost Gore the Election!:

Page 337: In 1987,* Clinton testifies against Robert Bork, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court. "President Reagan then nominated Judge Antonin Scalia, who was as conservative as Bork, but hadn't said and written as much to prove it." Scalia's behavior in Bush v. Gore amounted to "an act of judicial activism that might have made even Bob Bork blush."

Page 414: On choosing Al Gore as a running mate: "At first, I didn't think I would. On previous encounters, the chemistry between us had been correct but not warm."

Page 872: Clinton marvels at the genius of Bush's "compassionate conservatism"—"virtually the only argument he could make to swing voters against an administration with approval ratings in the 65 percent range."

Page 873: As the press reports that Clinton is sinking Gore's chances, Clinton calls Gore and volunteers to "stand on the doorstep of the Washington Post's headquarters and let him lash me with a bullwhip." Gore yuks, "Maybe we should poll that."

Page 927: Gore unveils his "people versus the powerful" slogan. In his only real criticism of Gore's campaign, Clinton writes, "The problem with the slogan was that it didn't give Al the full benefit of our record of economic and social progress or put into sharp relief Bush's explicit commitment to undo that progress. Also, the populist edge sounded to some swing voters as if Al, too, might change the economic direction of the country."

Page 928: On Gore's defeat in Arkansas: "I might have been able to turn it around, but it would have taken two or three days of rural work to do it, and I didn't know how big the problem was until I went home right before the election."

Pages 933-4: Clinton blames Gore's loss on the Supreme Court, calling Bush v. Gore "one of the worst decisions" ever handed down and ranking it with judicial disasters Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Ferguson.

The Perks of Power:

Page 516: Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw teach him the card game Oh Hell!

Page 701: Chelsea's sweet 16 party in 1996: Les Misérables at the National Theater, then paintball with friends at Camp David.

Page 742: Strom Thurmond, 94, tells Chelsea, "If I were 70 years younger, I'd court you!"

Page 879: On a visit to Italy, the actor Roberto Benigni leaps into Clinton's arms and shrieks, "I love you!"

What Is Ken Starr Thinking?:

Page 653: After a White House interview with Kenneth Starr, Clinton offers him a tour of the Lincoln Bedroom.

Page 699: Clinton theorizes that Hillary critics Starr, Al D'Amato, and Bill Safire find the first lady too successful, too domineering: "Some guys don't like that in a woman. ..."

Page 802: Clinton calls his grand jury testimony on Aug. 18, 1998, a "pornographic home movie." He writes, "That's what the, to date, whole four-year $40 million investigation had come down to: parsing the definition of sex." Clinton, of course, had used the occasion to parse the definition of "is."

Page 862: The last word on impeachment: "I will go to my grave being proud of what I had fought for in the impeachment battle, my last great showdown with the forces I had opposed all of my life—those who had defended the old order of racial discrimination and segregation in the South and played on the insecurities and fears of the white working class in which I grew up. ... They also hated me because I was an apostate, a white southern Protestant who could appeal to the very people they had always taken for granted."

Corrections, June 23, 2004: This piece originally stated that Clinton was attending Arkansas law school when he decided to drop out of ROTC. In fact, he was in Oxford and planning to enroll at Arkansas the next fall when he made the decision. It also said that a group from Arkansas visited Clinton in the White House in 1992; this took place in 1993. Finally, it noted that Clinton testified against Robert Bork in 1988; he did so in 1987. Clinton, however, seems to have bollixed the details of Antonin Scalia's appointment to the Supreme Court: He suggests that Scalia was nominated after Bork, but Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986.