Publisher Description

Jeffrey Toobin, who covered the Clinton sex scandal for The New Yorker, has written the definitive book, superbly researched and crafted like a novel, about the unlikely events that culminated in the trial to impeach President Clinton. Filled with previously unpublished documents and classified information, A Vast Conspiracy is an entirely fresh look at the scandal that nearly brought down a president. For starters, Toobin unravels the three strands of a national scandal - those leading from Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and Kenneth Starr - that created a legal, personal, and political disaster for Bill Clinton. Then, Toobin lays bare the complex and tangled motivations that fueled Tripp and Goldberg, Isikoff and Hyde, and the other motley characters. Toobin drives this provocative tale with the narrative style of a sensational (if improbable) legal thriller. Misguided, outlandish behavior was played out a the very highest levels, but Toobin analyzes the facts and the key figures with the dignity and insight that this story never received.

Author Biography

Jeffrey Toobin is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the legal analyst at ABC News. He served as an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn and as an associate counsel in the office of independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and the author of the bestselling The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson. Toobin lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

Contents Cast of Characters Chronology Prologue: "This Is Danny" 1. What the Bubbas Wrought 2. "Isn't That What Happened?" 3. Party Girl 4. "I Love This Man" 5. A Really Big Crush 6. "Joan Dean" 7. Their Tabloid Hearts 8. "Good Strong Christian Men" 9. "Draw the Penis for Me" 10. Consensual Sex 11. Revenge of the "Peace Corps" 12. The Definition of Sex -- and L-E-W-I-N-S-K-Y 13. The Richard Jewell File 14. "I Guess That Will Teach Them" 15. "Words of Assent" 16. "Eighteenth-Hand" Rumors 17. "I Don't Care If I'm Impeached..." 18. Winning by Losing 19. Mr. Genitalia and the Perjury Ladies 20. These Culture Wars Epilogue: Private and Public Acknowledgments Source Notes and Bibliography Index

Review

Chicago Sun-Times A rich and readable reprise of the Clinton scandals by the New Yorker writer who shows brilliantly how the American legal system spun out of control.
People A story as taut and surprising as any thriller....Unimpeachable page-turner.
The Economist A good read...a brave book.
Anthony Lewis The New York Review of Books A superb work of factual and legal analysis....Few novels are as gripping.
David Kaiser The Boston Globe An irresistibly readable new overview of the whole ugly case.
Floyd Abrams The New York Observer A superlatively researched and written book.
Michael Coffey Publishers Weekly Toobin has risen to the challenge of rendering the chaos of the impeachment, what led up to it and its denouement, in a sharp prose style and in a manner that makes sense of a disastrous phase of American political history.
Sherryl Connelly Daily News Compulsively readable....A Vast Conspiracy delivers new information, provides arresting perspective and is a helluva read for all that.
Thomas Powers The New York Times Book Review An admirably clear, vigorously written, plain-spoken and common-sensical book.
Wayne Woodlief Boston Herald A richly detailed narrative...[and] a fascinating read.

Review Quote

Wayne Woodlief Boston Herald A richly detailed narrative...[and] a fascinating read.

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