The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s

by Gil Troy

Overview

The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the charismatic and flawed baby boomer president, along with his polarizing but increasingly popular wife, Hillary.

Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the 1990s was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over. America was stable and prosperous. Yet Americans felt more unmoored and isolated. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, but his complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined.

Historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the decade's cultural changes. Taking the '90s year-by-year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it, offering answers to two enduring questions about Bill Clinton's legacy: How did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And, to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the following decade, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market?

Even more relevant as we head toward the 2016 election, The Age of Clinton will appeal to readers on both sides of the aisle as it chronicles the wild, transformative decade and the president at its center.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250063724
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/06/2015
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University and a visiting scholar in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution for the fall of 2015. Originally from Queens, New York, the is the author of ten previous books, including See How They Ran: The Changing Presidential Candidate; Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s; and the award-winning Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism. A weekly columnist for The Daily Beast, he has offered political commentary on all major TV networks in the United States and Canada. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Post, and The Wilson Quarterly, among other major media outlets.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE
“Lost in the Funhouse” How Bill Clinton Invented the Nineties
1. 1990: HOUSTON
Cowboy Cosmopolitanism and the End of History?
2. 1991: PHILADELPHIA
“You Just Don’t Get It” From the “New World Order” to Domestic Disorder
3. 1992: LITTLE ROCK
“Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” Bubba, Billary, and the Rise of the Adversarials
4. 1993: WASHINGTON, D.C.
“We Must Care for One Another” Clinton’s Learning Curve
5. 1994: SEATTLE
The New Nihilism in the Coffee Capital; and Renewed Republicanism in the Nation’s Capital
6. 1995: OKLAHOMA CITY
“Their Legacy Must Be Our Lives” Th e Claw- Back Kid Finds Windows of Opportunity
7. 1996: ALPHABET CITY, NEW YORK
“Take Me or Leave Me” Cultural Salvoes from Blue America
8. 1997: SILICON VALLEY
“Think Different” The Everyday Wizardry of Everything and Everywhere Machines
9. 1998: BEVERLY HILLS, 90210
The Great American Moral Panic
10. 1999: CHICAGO
Finding Forgiveness in the Church of Oprah
11. 2000: MIAMI
“The Purpose of Prosperity” Dilemmas of Multiculturalism and Hedonism in America’s Pleasure Capital
12. 2001
“Let’s Roll” America the Functional Under Attack
AUTHOR’S NOTE ON METHOD AND SOURCES
A GUIDE TO ABBREVIATIONS IN NOTES
NOTES
INDEX

Editorial Reviews

08/24/2015
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Troy (Moynihan’s Moment), a history professor at McGill University, delivers a detailed report on the turbulent Clinton White House years, complete with an account of the Clintons’ personal and political triumphs and tragedies. Troy notes that to many, Bill and Hillary Clinton represented the baby boomer generation, having come of age during J.F.K.’s Camelot era, as well as the blended values of “Reaganite conservatism and Great Society liberalism.” Against the backdrop of the progressive 1990s, Troy describes the Clintons’ efforts to navigate celebrity, scandal, GOP attacks, and impeachment threats while railing against “a right-wing conspiracy.” Though the Clintons failed to meet some of their domestic goals, the redeemed “son of the New South” accomplished much in international politics, created a budget surplus, and survived a charge of “impeachable offenses” in Congress. This meticulous, year-by-year account spans the silver-tongued Arkansas politician’s Washington reign, but Troy also provides a series of flashbacks to George H.W. Bush’s administration, touching upon the first Gulf War, the beating of Rodney King, and Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination. As ’90s nostalgia grows, Troy’s work reminds readers of the best and worst of the decade’s political culture. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"A fun romp through the decade and an intelligent way of understanding the cultural context and legacy of Bill Clinton’s era." -Associated Press

“With the 1990s passing from memory into history, Gil Troy, one of our leading political historians, is here to help us make sense of it. He not only takes us through the highs and lows of Bill Clinton's underappreciated presidency but sets its political events within the context of the cultural and technological developments that were transforming the country. In Troy's eminently readable narrative, filled with revealing nuggets of information, Clinton emerges, for all his foibles, as the rare president who grasped the future before it happened and helped set the nation on a course of progress.” —David Greenberg, author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency

“Offering a sweeping cultural and political review of the 1990s, Gil Troy ties together the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Newt Gingrich, Bill Gates, Kurt Cobain, and Harry Potter. He convincingly identifies the decade as the Age of Clinton for the president who personified its noble aspirations, notable achievements, missed opportunities, and embarrassing excesses.” —Donald A. Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: A History of the Washington Press Corps

“It takes an historian of enormous skill and subtlety to capture a man as complicated as Bill Clinton and a time as confusing as America in the 1990s. Gil Troy is that historian. His book is fresh, compelling, and fascinating. It combines powerful storytelling with creative synthesis. It's the best book on the man and his times.” —Steven M. Gillon, author of The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation

“Gil Troy's The Age of Clinton is a delightful romp down our memory lane of the 1990s. The narrative is seamless and written with insightful verve. Highly recommended!” —Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Cronkite

“This is the book we didn't know we were waiting for. It is the needed correction to the lazy idea that because we had peace and prosperity in the 1990s not much happened. Gil Troy shows us that living through history is no guarantee we understand it. Only now do I realize how much I missed. Troy takes the history seriously and shows us why we should too in an engrossing and balanced cultural study of the first order.” —Rick Shenkman, publisher of History News Network

“Gil Troy takes us on a captivating safari through America in the 1990s. His book on the Clinton years has a brilliant insight on just about every page about the president, the politics, the culture, and all of us. It's a magnificent read.” —Lesley Stahl, correspondent, Sixty Minutes

From the Publisher

Gil Troy's The Age of Clinton is a delightful romp down our memory lane of the 1990s. The narrative is seamless and written with insightful verve. Highly recommended!

Professor of History at Rice University and author Douglas Brinkley

Offering a sweeping cultural and political review of the 1990s, Gil Troy ties together the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Newt Gingrich, Bill Gates, Kurt Cobain, and Harry Potter. He convincingly identifies the decade as the Age of Clinton for the president who personified its noble aspirations, notable achievements, missed opportunities, and embarrassing excesses.

author of Reporting from Washington: A History Donald A. Ritchie

With the 1990s passing from memory into history, Gil Troy, one of our leading political historians, is here to help us make sense of it. He not only takes us through the highs and lows of Bill Clinton's underappreciated presidency but sets its political events within the context of the cultural and technological developments that were transforming the country. In Troy's eminently readable narrative, filled with revealing nuggets of information, Clinton emerges, for all his foibles, as the rare president who grasped the future before it happened and helped set the nation on a course of progress.

author of Republic of Spin: An Inside History David Greenberg

2015-07-25
A contextual reassessment of the Bill Clinton presidency. Troy (History/McGill Univ.; Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism, 2012, etc.), who has written extensively about presidential politics, "seriously" reconsiders the era of the Clinton White House, apart from the media's obsession with Bill's and Hillary's "character flaws." Bill Clinton dominated the 1990s as Ronald Reagan dominated the 1980s, and in an extraordinarily complex decade that embraced the Internet and what Troy calls "virtual prosperity," the Clintons were the first baby boomers in the White House to meld their 1960s sensibilities with the modern age. Clinton rode into power on the self-righteous reaction to the daunting domestic challenges that President George Bush preferred to ignore in favor of dealing with the end of the Cold War—namely, racism, sexism, and homophobia. The 1992 election was "a true generational culture clash," writes the author, and the challenge that the Clintons took up successfully was presenting a program that combined "Wal-Mart populism and Ivy League progressivism." Recovering from major stumbles during the first year of his presidency and benefiting from a steep learning curve, Clinton managed to build a stable policy foundation on "common ground," such as a global economy and welfare reform, without expanding the reaches of government. Blessed with heavy-handed enemies who often self-destructed (Newt Gingrich), the Clintons effectively attacked their critics and recast themselves constantly—Bill as the "good father" and Hillary from vilified White House enforcer to the rehabilitated author of It Takes a Village (1996). With plenty of detail, Troy depicts the underlying tensions of this conflicted decade, from the Rodney King beating to the advent of the 24-hour Fox News Channel to the "manufactured miracles" of Silicon Valley. Both sympathetic and fair-handed, a solid examination of the "Adversarial Supercouple" before the slide toward scandal and impeachment.

Kirkus Reviews