September 19, 2007
Austinist Takes A Look At What Bill Clinton's Been Reading
In town to raise money for Hillary's campaign at the home of long time Clinton family friend Roy Spence of GSD&M, Bill made a stop at BookPeople where he signed over a thousand copies of his new book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World this past Friday.
Once the coast was relatively clear, secret service fanned out in formations that would have made any football coach proud. "He's heading from two to one," they whispered to one another via high-tech secret service gadgetry as Bill perused the aisles of books, picking several up for himself, Hillary, and Chelsea, while making sure to comment on anything that caught his eye.
"How about a little nighttime reading?" said Clinton with a giggle, picking up a copy of Hans-Jurgen Dopp's Ecstasy.
As he pored over the shelves of books, he half-joked about having met most of the authors. One that he pointed out in particular was Unbowed, the memoir of his "good friend" Wangari Maathai — "a little kooky, but great." She was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Bill went on about other books like Sam Huntington's Who We Are, Dave Eggers' What Is the What, How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor by Erik S. Reinert, and a host of others that you would expect a socially-conscious world leader to have read. But then he picked up James Lee Burke's latest mystery/thriller The Tin Roof Blowdown, declaring him "just great, really great," and saying this was "definitely his best book yet."
Clinton may be an Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar, political genius, former president and potential first First Gentleman, but he still likes to occasionally read cheap paperback thrillers you'd find at an airport news stand like the rest of us.
So, in the end, what did Bill Clinton plunk down a chunk of change for after all the perusing, cooing and ahhing? Find out after the jump!
Photo byJoel Nihlean
The first things Bill picked up were two copies of a book to bring back to his wife and daughter.
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women
by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English.
Gifts for Hillary and Chelsea. The book's title says it all. It's an encapsulation of two hundred years of (mostly bad) advice women have been given.
Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography
by Charlotte Chandler
A comprehensive and steamy biography of the scandalous Golden Age star Ingrid Bergman, who dumped her dentist hubby for Italian director Roberto Rossellini. The book not only boasts more than 40 terrific photos, but also interviews with nearly everyone close to her, including her husbands, lovers, children, and the directors and actors with whom she worked.
Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity
by Samuel P. Huntington
An old, white curmudgeon analyzes what he sees as the coming identity crisis in the United States. The book examines the impact of Hispanic immigrants and their values on the notion of national identity. Americans are losing the connection to their English-speaking, Anglo-Protestant roots he argues. Why? Immigration, multiculturalism, secularism, and the end of the cold war, of course!
The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples
by Tim Flannery
Starting with the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs and running all the way up through continent's discovery by Christopher Columbus prehistoric man. What could sound dry in academic is, in the hands of Tim Flannery, a thrilling if nerdy account of the rise of megafauna. The fall of mammoths and mastodons to the ever evolving science of stone weaponry, and the science of using near freezing ponds as the first refrigerators is sharply articulated with an eye for what us non-scientist types would be interested in.
Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Critically acclaimed, award-winning, #1 best-seller. What else do you want to know? Everyone else and their mother has read this book and now Bill Clinton will too. It is an historical novel set both in the Great Depression and present day. Centering around 93-year-old nursing home resident Jacob Jankowski, the story is told through a series of flashbacks to Jacob's youth when he dropped out of college to join the circus as a veterinarian.
Images from Alibris
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i love that clinton was shopping for sale books. maybe that's how he balanced the budget?
oh my gawd, how could he not get joseph campell's hero's journey? and it's on sale, too!!
heh. more reduced-price joseph for me.