ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Washington Post, my professional home since 1977, has given me the freedom to develop my own style, and for that I thank the editors who set the paper’s tone over the years: Ben Bradlee, the late Howard Simons, Leonard Downie, Richard Harwood, Bob Kaiser, and Bob Woodward. Harwood, Kaiser, and Woodward have been special colleagues, knowing when to protect me and when to push me. They did both during my work on this book, while also providing intelligent readings of the manuscript. Bill Hamilton was generous with his encouragement and made it easier for me to write the in-depth articles that inspired this book. Any writer would be lucky to have a colleague as supportive as Maralee Schwartz, who boosted my spirits countless times. Editors Steve Luxenberg, Karen DeYoung, Fred Barbash, Brian Kelly, and Bill Elsen also helped me along the way. I feel a special debt of gratitude to Michael Weisskopf, my longtime pal and colleague, who worked with me on several articles that informed this book, and to his wife Judith Katz, who put up with me, excessive use of towels and all, during my early reporting trips to Washington while I was still living in Austin, Texas.

Other Post journalists whose work educated me include David Broder, E. J. Dionne, Dan Balz, Tom Edsall, Ann Devroy, Mike Isikoff, Sharon LaFraniere, David Von Drehle, Ruth Marcus, Al Kamen, Martha Sherrill, Laura Blumenfeld, Lloyd Grove, Susan Schmidt, Howard Schneider, Gene Weingarten, Donnie Radcliff, and Chuck Babcock. I also learned more about my subject from other journalists: Mark Halperin of ABC , a good friend and invaluable source of information; Adam Nagourney and Bill Nichols of USA Today; Walter Shapiro of Esquire; Garry Wills of the New York Review of Books; Priscilla Painton of Time; Ron Brownstein, David Lauter, Cathleen Decker, and William Rempel of the Los Angeles Times; Gwen Ifill, Jeff Gerth, Alessandra Stanley, Maureen Dowd, and Michael Kelly of the New York Times; Matt Cooper and Donald Baer of U.S. News; Jeff Birnbaum of The Wall Street Journal; Curtis Wilkie of The Boston Globe and John Brummett of the Arkansas Times. Of Brummett, Ernest Dumas, Max Brantley, and many of their colleagues in Arkansas journalism, I think it is time for an outsider to say that they did a fine job examining Clinton during his gubernatorial years. The notion that Clinton got an easy ride before the national press corps came along is a presumptuous canard of East Coast journalism.

During the course of this project, I was lucky to have the help of several brilliant young researchers: foremost Katherine McCarron in Washington, and also Jennifer Pitts in Washington, Sarah Maraniss in Austin, Dan Alexander in London, and Peter Green in Prague. Lucy Shackelford and Elizabeth Hudson of the Post were also generous with their research assistance, as was the entire Post library staff. Other helpful librarians were Jon K. Reynolds at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library; Ben Primer, archivist at Princeton’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library; Betty Austin, Fulbright archivist at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville; and Linda Pine, special collections librarian at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Thanks also to Mary Nell Turner, town historian of Hope, and Inez Cline, her counterpart in Hot Springs.

Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, in guiding me through my first book, was everything I had hoped a book editor would be: encouraging, coaxing, intelligent, excited, and exacting. Her refined red pen, and the black pen of her calm deputy, Eric Steel, instructed me in the art of long-form narrative. Thanks also to Ann Adelman and Lydia Buechler, first-rate copy editors. Rafe Sagalyn, my agent, was always generous and supportive.

My work in England was made infinitely easier by the good-humored hospitality of the Harris branch of the Maraniss extended family: Pat Harris, Francis Harris, and Angela Harris. Special thanks to John Harris for paving the way for me at Oxford. Harry Walsh made it possible for a computer illiterate to write a book. Michael Norman, my old dear friend, pushed me to write and kept me going when I doubted myself, as did John Feinstein, Chip Brown, Neil Henry, Richard Cramer, Mike Connolly, Mike Tackett, Elsa Walsh, Steve Amos, Jon Kalb, Don McCarthy, Henry Bryan, Maddy Biais, John Katzenbach, Blaine Harden, and Frank Roloff.

Two great editors, my parents, Mary and Elliott Maraniss, came bursting out of retirement to devote themselves to this book. It was a joy to decipher my father’s illegible brilliance and to see how my mother could snap a sentence into shape with one precise editor’s mark. Maggie, our sweet old sheepdog, stayed home with me during my long year of writing, making it less lonely. And most of all my thanks go to Linda, who supported me through it all, reading and editing every word late at night on the computer screen, sitting in my wobbly, screws-loose chair. She and Andrew and Sarah are the reasons my wheels did not come off. They are not everything, as the old Packer coach would say, they are the only thing.