First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton.

• Author: Alter, Jonathan

The best of Clinton, the worst of Clinton: A new biography carefully traces both back to their roots

This is a first-rate political biography by The Washington Post reporter who won a well-deserved Pulitzer two years ago for his reporting on Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. While the book contains no shocking revelations, it is full of small truths about Clinton's background and character. The book may not change any minds about Clinton, but it should contribute to a more complex understanding of a complex man. "The contradictions co-exist in Clinton," Maraniss writes. "Considerate and calculating, easy-going and ambitious, mediator and predator."

Clinton's paradoxes stem from those of his life. Ultimately, he is the product of several distinct and contradictory worlds. There is the Clinton from Hope, Arkansas: religious and unceasingly loyal to his family; the Hot Springs Clinton: often vulgar, and given to infidelity; and the Yale Clinton: polished and feverishly ambitious, yet genuine.

What has remained consistent throughout his life, though, has been Clinton's enormous gift for politics. Indeed, what is most puzzling about Clinton is why such a naturally talented politician should have so many problems managing the political dimensions of the presidency. Maraniss's book is not particularly analytical and it ends on the day Clinton announces his candidacy for president in 1991, so there are no direct answers. There are, however, little hints throughout.

Clinton's God-given political skills are clear almost from infancy. The key is in his ability to listen to other people, a surprisingly rare quality in politicians. Most politicians know that they must pretend to listen but are usually so interested in themselves that the pretense eventually shows through. Clinton is tremendously, even obsessively, interested in his own advancement, but his curiosity about other people's lives is evident throughout the book. Almost every one of Clinton's friends comments about it in some form. "Clinton was the master of the soft sell," Maraniss writes. "He remembered the smallest details of people's lives, and his deftness at personalizing the [thank-you] notes tended to overcome whatever unseemliness might otherwise have tainted a blatantly political contact."

At every school, he was the one white guy who was willing to sit occasionally at the black table. True, this was often an attempt to get votes in elections. When he was teaching at the...