Madam President: Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House?

The United States is sixty-seventh in the world when it comes to the representationof women in government. On November 4, 2008, that could allchange if voters choose to send Hillary Clinton to the White House.

This timely book sets Hillary in the context of what politics (and life ingeneral) is like for women in America. It contains interviews with prominent female spokespersons, including an interview with Gloria Steinem. As yet, no other book looks at Hillary specifically as a female candidate.

Written by Washington-based Guardian journalist Suzanne Goldenberg, the book looks at how Hillary Clinton, product of the boomer generation of women who were rewriting the roles of men and women, negotiated her own marriage. That is, how she carved out an identity of her own and cleaned up the scandals while Bill was governor and in the White House. It goes up to the point when Hillary Clinton decided to run for the Senate. Goldenberg focuses in particular on Hillary's coming of age at Yale Law School, where she interviewed several of her former classmates to talk about what it was like to be a woman in those turbulent times. As yet, no other book has taken a close look at the Yale years.

This is a concise, polemical account of a powerful woman by a leading female journalist that cuts through all the dross of the other books to get you to where you need to be to understand Hillary's place in the US political landscape, but it is also a guide to the landscape itself.

"In this slim book, Guardian correspondent Goldenberg offers a critical but balanced look at the life and presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Goldenberg examines the historical challenges facing women running for public office in the United States, drawing upon the presidential candidacy of Carol Moseley Braun and the vice-presidential run of Geraldine Ferraro, as well as representations of women in power in film and television. The book's brief biography of Clinton is no match for more thorough accounts found in Carl Bernstein's A Woman in Charge and in Clinton's memoir, Living History. Goldenberg pre-sents Clinton's history largely to contextualize her cautious centrist candidacy and to argue that she must abandon her 'timidity' to retain the public's trust. While this book offers little fresh information or insight, it is a straightforward introduction to Clinton and her campaign." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Suzanne Goldenberg is an award-winning journalist who has been the US Correspondent of The Guardian for the last 4 years.