Synopses & Reviews
The Best of Times--the '90s were indeed the best of times. Unprecedented wealth and the breathtaking progress of science and technology ushered in the Internet and the deciphering of the genome. Promises abounded, but a deepening sense of unease hovered over America as the worst of times seemed to be upon us as well-gossip, scandal, and a frenzied media like nothing ever seen before.
Based on exclusive interviews with the decade's most influential players, here is a fascinating re-creation of the best and worst episodes of the decade. With sweeping force and cultural acumen, Johnson revives the '90s, the ups and downs, filled with all that we may have forgotten and, most importantly, all that we never knew. In four fascinating parts, Johnson delivers the stories behind the stories-revealing the personalities behind the media party of the '90s, the partisanship that didn't succeed in bringing down the president, the pervasive technology that stretched from Silicon Valley to Monsanto with the corresponding hopes and fears, and the equally extreme reactions on Wall Street to every last bit of it.
A tremendous work from a major authority and writer, The Best of Times covers the entire wonderful yet woeful decade, gavel to gavel.
Includes interviews with:
Book One: Technotimes
Nathan Myhrvold, chief technology guru (former), Microsoft
David Baltimore, president, Cal Tech University and Nobel Prize winner
Bob Shapiro, chief executive officer, Monsanto
Regis McKenna, entrepreneur
Book Two: Teletimes
Ted Harbert, head of TV programming, DreamWorks SKG
Norman Lear, creator of "All in the Family"
David Geffen, partner, DreamWorks SKG
Michael Bloomberg, head of Bloomberg News
Steven Brill, founder of Brill's Content
Book Three: Scandal Times
Sam Dash, law professor, Georgetown
Senator Alan K. Simpson (former)
Senator Dale Bumpers (former)
Book Four: Millennial Times
Senator Bob Kerrey (former)
Senator John McCain
Dr. Ruth Faden, medical ethicist
In addition, Johnson interviewed leaders of Congress, top White House aides, cabinet members, and prominent political operatives of both parties in gathering material for this history.
A JAMES H. SILBERMAN BOOK
Review
"Haynes Johnson has painted a vivid, unforgettable portrait of the American 1990s. Just as Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday forever defined the Roaring Twenties, The Best of Times will long stand as the authoritative evocation of a dizzying decade awash with dot-com dreamers, media madness, runaway scandal mongering, and civic squalor." David M. Kennedy
Review
"An electric, wise, surprising and original look at a tumultuous era that changes the way we look at the Clinton years and it helps us understand the morals, technology, finance, politics and culture of the country we will be living in tomorrow." Michael Beschloss
Review
"Haynes Johnson is the very best at what he does. Nobody matches him for bringing the laser light of a brilliant reporter's eye and wisdom to a period of recent history. This is a major work of reporting, analysis and insight." Jim Lehrer
Review
"In this brilliant work Haynes Johnson takes us to the heart of the American crisis the gap between a mediocre, fumbling political leadership and a dynamic leadership outside government in science, technology, medicine, communications, entertainment. A great and prophetic work." James MacGregor Burns
Synopsis
The Clinton years, they were the best of times and the worst. A time of unprecedented wealth, of breathtaking progress in technology, the world-changing Internet, and the genome with the medical miracles it promised. And yet, a deepening sense of unease hovered over America, and a deepening concern about how these developments would alter our lives.
Set against these triumphs was another America dominated by all-news TV and the gossip journalism of the Internet, driven by a celebrity culture, lacking civility, racially divided, and presided over by our first Boomer leader, William Jefferson Clinton.
From that first moment, when the white Bronco popped up on the nation's screens, O.J. was the ultimate TV story played out in excruciating detail all O.J., all the time. In this remarkable book, Haynes Johnson re-creates it all the chase, the cops and lawyers, the trial, all come to life in a superbly paced narrative. In the telling of the story, he has much to say about violence, sex, race, and gossip in the media.
Enter Monica, along with the two witches of the tale, Linda Tripp and Lucy Goldberg, plotting to bring down the president while his pal, Vernon Jordan, the ultimate insider, works to save him. In Haynes Johnson's hands both Bill and Monica become sympathetic characters, caught in a trap largely of their own making. It is almost a tragic story, or at least a semi-tragic one.
Besides thse two great dramas, Johnson also writes of the Wall Street boom and the culture of instant (if temporary) dot-com wealth, of Hollywood and the rise of the mogul David Geffen, and the lives and deeds of dozens of other characters. He concludes with an account of the Election of 2000, how the '90s made it inevitable.
The Best of Times, the product of four years of interviews with America's leaders in politics, business, and science, is in the best tradition of timeless social history a memorable portrait of the nation at a turning point.
Synopsis
We were awash in money and spellbound by celebrity. We ogled at O. J., marveled over Monica, and sent the stock market soaring. It was a time of unprecedented wealth and possibility, it was a time of waste and squandered opportunities.
In the Best of Times (yes, the title is ironic), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Haynes Johnson looks back on the decade when Bill Clinton and Bill Gates ran the country--and the rest of us sat back and downloaded it all off the Internet. He opens with a tense, exciting amount of chess master's Gary Kasparov's match with Deep Blue--a defeat of man by machine emblematic of a decade in which, as Thoreau said, we became "tools of [our] tools." He takes us through the work-obsessed halls of Microsoft, the lab that created Dolly the Sheep, and the Hollywood studios that operated on the mantra "dumb and dumber." The book is full of fresh insights into the headlines of the decade: the avalanche of wealth that rewarded some and passed many by; the societal schisms that could be seen from the O. J. Simpson trials to Congress.
With a sharp eye for the quote or detail that perfectly captures a moment in time, Johnson knows just how to tell this story. He serves up no-holds-barred portraits of the key players, for a sorrowful David Geffen, who assures us that movies will only get worse, to Monica Lewinsky as a monument to entitlement. What lies ahead? It's uncertain. We can only hope that Haynes Johnson is there to explain it to us when it happens.
The Best of Times, the product of four years of interviews with America's leaders in politics, business, and science, is in the best tradition of timeless social history--a memorable portrait of the nation at a turning point.
About the Author
Haynes Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the bestsellers Sleepwalking Through History and The Bay of Pigs. He is a regular television commentator on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and lives in Washington, D.C.