Having gained wealth and notoriety for his published attacks on Pres. Bill Clinton and Anita Hill, in 1994 David Brock was advanced 1 million dollars to write an expose on First Lady Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately for the political extremists who had launched his fame and fortune, at about that time Brock gained a conscience (as the author later outlined in his book Blinded by the Right). Thus, what was projected as a full scale attack on Bill Clinton through his unpopular wife turned out to be a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Hillary Clinton.

Brock traces Hillary Clinton's life through her years in college and law school, through her early relationship with Bill and her assistance in his early political campaigns, his governorship of Arkansas, the revelations of Bill's dalliances with women, and the first few years of the Clinton presidency. Hillary comes across as an extraordinarily intelligent, hard working, and ambitious woman with high ideals and goals of social and economic justice. While Brock's portrayal is not entirely admiring (he tends to damn with faint praise), the worst Brock can say is that Hillary was politically naive and socially inflexible, and underestimated the ruthlessness of her enemies. Examining the politically motivated, media- invented "scandals" (the Whitewater land deal, the firing of the White House travel office staff), Brock finds absolutely no evidence of wrong- doing by either of the Clintons, and certainly nothing that would justify the impeachment effort by the opposition party. The title of Brock's book was a terrible choice (there is no "seduction" involved beyond her faithfulness to her deeply flawed husband), and one wonders if it wasn't imposed by the publisher who sought to gain something from what they had intended as character assassination.

The abridged audio version of Brock's 1997 book, read by the author himself, offers a useful overview of a very small piece of history, as it was occurring. Much has happened since its publication 15 years ago-- including the second term of the Clinton presidency, Hillary Clinton's career as a New York Senator, and her extraordinary success as US Secretary of State in the Obama administration. More recent works on Hillary Clinton put her ongoing political career in a broader perspective, and with the greater objectivity and dispassionate judgement on her earlier years as permitted by the passage of time. Needless to say, more chapters in Hillary Clinton's political career remain to be lived and written. ( )