The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s

by Gil Troy

The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Seismic shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the talented, charismatic, and flawed Baby Boomer president and his controversial, polarizing, but increasingly popular wife Hillary.

Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the final decade of the twentieth century was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over, America was safe, stable, free, and prosperous, and yet Americans felt more unmoored, anxious, and isolated than ever. Having lost the script telling us our place in the world, we were forced to seek new anchors. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we simultaneously relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, a man of passion and of contradictions both revered and reviled, whose complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined.

In this unique analysis, historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the cultural changes that dominated the decade. By taking the '90s year-by-year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it. In so doing, he offers answers to two of the enduring questions about Clinton's legacy: how did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And, to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the decade that followed his departure from office, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market?

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Biography, American History

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2015

About the author

Gil Troy is the author of "The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s" to be published October 6 by Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin's Press. An American presidential historian and a regular columnist for the Daily Beast, this will be his eleventh book. He is Professor of History at McGill University and will be in Washington DC this fall as a Visting Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Troy wrote The Age of Clinton on a tight deadline, speculating that Hillary Clinton just might run for President in 2016 and that Americans would be ready this fall to rethink what happened in the 1990s. He worked until 5 AM most nights, woke up at 7 (he is married with four children), jogged for an hour, then worked. He met the deadline and lost 30 pounds.

Reviews

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 1 out of 5]

THE AGE OF CLINTON: AMERICA IN THE 1990s. Gil Troy. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015.

Well, that was disappointing. I was hoping for a decent narrative of the decades, hopefully with some thoughtful analysis thrown in as well. That seemed like a reasonable hope given that Troy is a professor of history and has written for mass media publications.

But it didn’t even come close. I found neither effective analysis nor even any sort of narrative. It read like a second-rate “For Dummies” book. Troy divided up his book into 12 chapters – one per year (from 1990 to 2001). He’d start each chapter with a hook – a key event that happened in that year. Then he’d spend the rest of the chapter on what else happened that year. It came off incredibly pro forma. It’s like you could just see he had index cards with a dozen main topics for each year, and he was sure to squeeze them all in. So he’d give a page and a half on this topic, two pages on another, and so on. And he gave each section it’s own header. The headers did let you know what the next section was going to be about, but also highlighted how there was really no flow to this at all. The book was an inch deep and a mile wide. It made sure to say a little bit about a lot of things, and thus ended up saying nothing about any of it. It’s structured chronologically, but lacks a narrative. Impressive.

As for analysis, there isn’t really much I got out of it. It’s loosed focused on Clinton – check out the title. But a lot of this has nothing to do with Clinton. It’s just stuff that happened to America in the decade. When Troy tries to make some broader ranging comments, it falls flat because there is nothing to moor it to. It’s just empty talk.

Question to myself: why was I so upset at this book, when I loved “The Glory and the Dream” by William Manchester. Both are similar. Both are narrative political histories that talk a little bit about a lot of things. Even the most obvious different – Manchester’s book is four times as long as this one – isn’t really that different (Manchester covers four decades, 1932-72, so it’s about as much coverage per year). But I loved that pop history. Why?

Maybe it’s me. I read that at age 18 or so, not age 40. Also, Manchester’s tome was on a tome I knew some stuff about, but also had plenty of gaps. So I learned a lot there. This? I lived through this. More than that, Manchester just did a good job writing his book. There was a narrative flow. This lacked it entirely.

Some things to glean from this book…The Pentagon won the battle of public perception over reporters in the Gulf War. It has a great quote from Michael Kinsley: “When the pie isn’t growing, people become more obsessed with their slice” – that describes 21st century America pretty well. Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative made 384 recommendations proposing 1,250 ways to streamline government. Technology advances throughout the book. There is aol in 1993 and the internet explosion with Windows ’95. He notes the role that government investment played in it. Spousal abuse fell by 50% in the 1990s, reflecting changing mores. From 1970-95, poverty for the elderly fell by half but rose by 37% for children. Many were left out of the boom. The black values revolution included the Million Man March. White lower class family dysfunction grew. Clinton opted to keep affirmative action when some of his supporters feared he wouldn’t due to triangulation. The shutdown came when the GOP pushed for heavy cuts into social programs. Gingrich badly overshot that one, thinking people would blame Clinton. There were complaints about “Motel 1600” with Clinton donors spending the night. There was one last scandal over Clinton’s last minute pardons and ethical lapses. Glass-Steagall was repealed with overwhelming support in Congress. Hispanics rose from 9% to 12.5% of the nation’s population. It dropped from 80 to 75% white in the 1990s. Interracial marriage was up seven-fold from the 1960s. In 1990, three-fourths of America condemned homosexuality, but only 54% did in 2000.

[Biblio Files (takingadayoff) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's only 15 years since Bill Clinton left office and you might think that's too soon to start thinking about his presidency as history. But a lot has happened since then and if we look at when he was first elected, that's twenty-three years ago, an entire generation ago. What are we waiting for?

Presidential historian Gil Troy looks at the Clinton presidency as a product of the times, that is, The Nineties. He reminds us frequently what was going on at the time that Clinton was taking any particular action. There's the rise of the internet, the birth of the cellphone (no smartphones yet!), Columbine. Osama bin Laden, who had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, with America aid, was also an anti-American who was starting to worry American intelligence agencies. The things he did get done seem more like victories for Republicans than for Democrats (Welfare Reform and the gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act.)

Troy seems to be generally pro-Clinton, but can't overlook his many faults. Consequently it's a fair look at the man and the presidency set against the times. For all his oversized ambitions, Clinton accomplished very little and left the nation with conflicting thoughts about the Clinton era. Bill Clinton was a charming, greedy, selfish, generous, confident, insecure man and president. You could argue that he was exactly the president Nineties America deserved. A thoughtful and fascinating look at recent history, especially pertinent as Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2016.

(Thanks to St. Martin's Press for a review copy.)

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for research. It's a decent overview of major cultural events during the 1990s, although there was very little here that I didn't already know. (Being reminded of Clinton's Arkansas disbarment, however, was a welcome tickler.) It also doesn't help that Gil Troy isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is and writes with a smug and imperious tone that is extremely off-putting, particularly since it is tinged with an unearned elitism. He has done a small amount of original interviews, but none of this really contributes to what I'd call "a work of history," which her risibly insists that this is. Having said that, this is a relatively dependable volume of cultural reporting and collation. It obviously isn't easy to synthesize an entire decade into a 300 page volume, but Troy has done a decent job, despite his obnoxious writing voice.

[Nicolas Van Der Haar · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this book was any more sweeping and generalised it would try to link the invention of gunpowder to the suicide of Kurt Cobain.
Read if your devotee of the 90’s and not much else.

[Margaret · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so bad. It was like a list of bullet points. "This happened, then this happened, then this happened," for every year from 1990 to 2001. I was a teenager in the 90s, I was paying attention to the news and pop culture, and I didn't learn a anything new or interesting from this book. I have read many other, better books and articles about all the stuff Gil Troy just threw onto the page. He also offers zero introspection or retrospection about any of the events discussed. The brutal beating of Rodney King in 1992 led to the acquittal of the police who beat him, which led to a major riot. OK, but then why not point out the continuing police brutality and homicide -by-cop that increased disturbingly over the next decades, leading up to BLM and a real reckoning and conversation? That's just one example of hundreds. Maybe it wasn't the point of the book to offer anything other than bare facts, but his judgmental, Old Man Yells at Cloud tsk-tsking of pretty much everything he didn't like, which was a gigantic list including sex for fun, no-fault divorce, TV shows that aren't about a happy nuclear family, the very idea of anyone wanting psychotherapy, grunge, hip hop, coffee shops, supermodels, feminism, etc., got tiresome fast. I don't think Troy has agreed with anything anyone did in the US since about 1945. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and thought-provoking, but the author doesn't always carry out the kaleidoscopic cultural approach effectively; in particular, he has a flippancy that's a little grating after awhile and he can be very condescending about so-called identity politics and certain cultural touchstones--just one particular example that jumped out at me is this quote from p. 242 (referring to Oprah's speech at a National Book Award reception): "In celebrating opportunity despite adversity and commonality amid diversity, Oprah reduced books to props in her glorious American uplift project."

I enjoyed his book "Morning in America," about the 1980s, but his occasional tendency in that book to make broad pronouncements is more pervasive and harder to put aside in this book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the 90s surveys that I’ve read recently, this one was the best. It’s still too Clinton-centric—I’d love a 90s history that isn’t primarily about Clinton, but this was the best I’ve read so far.

[Kathy Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gil Troy’s THE AGE OF CLINTON isn’t so much a book about Bill Clinton’s presidency as it is about the decade he both reflected and influenced. Troy posits that Clinton is one of three presidents who define their decade (Reagan in the 1980s and Roosevelt in the 1930s are the other two). As Troy puts it, “This book’s central assumption is that we can best understand Clinton and the 1990s by overlaying the story of his presidency on the broader story of the decade, viewing the two together, to see what stands out.” And what stands out are the iconic events that underscored Clinton’s presidency, the challenges he faced in office, the mistakes he made, and the things he accomplished in spite of them. On one level, this is a massive book of lists, as Troy catalogs American ‘90s pop culture, political craziness, world events, and a down-home Southern redneck president who oversaw it all. On another level, it’s a very personal story, the saga of a golden couple who came to Washington amidst massive change and social turbulence, weathered the storm, and came out still golden (if a little less shiny) on the other side.

If you’ve lived through the ‘90s, this will feel like a nostalgic trip into the past. Troy references the news stories we all remember (Anita Hill, Rodney King, the OJ Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, and genocide in Rwanda) and the pop culture touchstones that define the ‘90s (Harry Potter, “Thelma and Louise,” Madonna, Billy Ray Cyrus, “The Blair Witch Project,” Y2K, and “West Wing”). At times, it all feels very “Forrest Gump,” with Troy racing through the highs and lows, the tragedies and the silliness that define the 1990s. There’s little actual depth here, and nothing that seemed new or strikingly revealing, but it is at times a hoot to relive these years through Troy’s very sharp lens.

Clinton himself comes across as a man who embraced both the successes of the Reagan years and the magical promise of a technological future. He led American into the computer age, tried to tackle the health care problem, battled his own weaknesses and failings, and ended up – as Troy puts it – as both a hypocrite and a “noble game changer.” The Age of Clinton, says Troy, was “an Age of Giddiness,” “an Age of Indulgence,” and “an Age of Skepticism.” And Clinton’s “unique mix of vice and virtue, of cynicism and idealism, of craftiness and innocence, of frankness and falseness, worked in the 1990s.”

THE AGE OF CLINTON isn’t totally successful in its attempt to define both a President and a decade. At times its lists seem dizzying, and I found myself lost in the overwhelming quantity of its details. Troy also assumes that his readers are familiar with the events and personalities he references – he provides very little background, and even less depth of discussion. When he writes about Anita Hill, for example, he assumes we know who she is, and why she was testifying at Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing. It’s the same with Troy’s portrayal of the Monica Lewinsky affair and Clinton’s eventual impeachment – he mentions the “blue dress,” and Clinton’s famous parsing of the word “is,” but explains none of it.

Troy’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton is interesting. He shows her morphing from Bill’s “Co-President and Health Care Czarina,” to “Hillary the Celebrity” (with the publication of her book “It Takes a Village”), to “the Wronged Wife,” and finally to an “Independent Woman” running for her own Senate seat . . . and eventually for President in her own right. It’s interesting watching her develop as both a woman and a candidate.

I liked parts of THE AGE OF CLINTON very much, and Troy definitely has a knack for drawing together such diverse elements as politics, pop culture, and media craziness. Then again, perhaps they aren’t diverse at all. And I found many similarities between the 1990s and the 2010s – the same desperate division between Democrats and Republicans, the same arguments over health care and gay rights, the same fears about gun violence and school shootings, the same fixation on technology and the Internet, and the same obsessions with sex and scandal. It was eye-opening to realize how much of what America is today was born in the decade of Clinton’s presidency. This book paints an interesting portrait of America in the 1990s, even if it leaves the reader less than fully satisfied.

[Please note: I was provided a copy of this book for review; the opinions expressed here are my own.]

[Dwayne Wojtowicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads.com giveaway.

How does one write a review on a book that gives you a historical retrospect of a period of time? It’s hard, but you need to keep one thing in mind: Did the author convey to you what he wanted? I believe that Gil Troy did that in “The Age of Clinton.”

“The Age of Clinton,” written by Gil Troy, is a retrospective look at the rise of Bill Clinton; his parlaying of the Republicans which propelled him to the White House; his downfalls, including his impeachment; his final years in his presidency.

Gil Troy is a Professor of History at McGill University. His use of resources allowed for him to develop a historical fact book that tells us about the Clintons, specifically Bill. Though he does bring Hillary into the story line, she is more used after Clinton’s first election and how she grew, not only as a First Lady, but also as a fighter for women’s rights and health care reform.

He even relates the Clinton Administration to what is happening in society at that time. Troy even relates to the events in the music scene, as well as the movie scene. His aptitude to do this allows us, as the readers, to fully understand what is happening at that time in the world and in the Clinton Administration.

Professor Troy’s writing style isn’t complex, nor is it lackadaisical; it is the perfect blend. The sentences and thoughts flow gently throughout the historical descriptive verbage to provide a clear and concise understanding of what he is trying to relate to the reader.

As a big politico pundit, I was amazed at how Professor Troy laid out his book. He just didn’t start off with Bill Clinton as Governor of Arkansas, but with the Reagan Administration. The country was being straggled with eight years of Reagan policies and economics; George H. W. Bush did nothing during his single term in office, but to continue the Reagan legacy. With no end in sight, Bill Clinton, after staging a miraculous comeback as Governor, decides that what he did in Arkansas, can be applied nationwide. Clinton throws his hat into the ring for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Clinton goes on to win the nomination, and later, the Presidency.

Troy lays out the progress of how Clinton rose to the top, based upon what the Republicans had done in their two administrations before his. It was the cumulative blunders that Reagan and Bush created which propelled Clinton to the ultimate finish line.

But Troy doesn’t stop there. He brings in Clinton’s personal life, both good and bad. Troy talks about Clinton’s “sexual encounters” with Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, as they play a big role in Clinton’s rises and falls throughout his presidency.

Do I believe that Gil Troy’s writing is slanted and bias towards the Clintons and the Democratic Party? The answer is no. Troy lays out a substantial amount of information which allows us, the readers, to make certain conclusions about Bill Clinton, his administration, and his legacy. Does he give us a conclusion to his writing? It’s hard to say, but I can tell you one thing that Gil Troy does leave us with: A sense of the Clinton Administration as it struggled with Congress and how it matured.

“The Age of Clinton” is very highly recommended, even if you weren’t a big fan of Clinton.

[Giff Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this book 4.5 stars if I could; I gave it 5 because there were so many inexplicable 1-star ratings on Goodreads that I felt compelled to round up. This book is the product of excellent research, some very thoughtful analysis, and some pretty darn good writing. It is much, much more than a recitation of facts, as it does probe deeply into Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the contradictory feelings that the American public generally has about the Clintons, especially Bill, who, as the author noted, “brought joy, exhilaration, exaltation, and inspiration” to the American people, but who also “brought shame, anger, frustration, disappointment, confusion and despair”. Bill Clinton made the country more “inclusive”, “forgiving” and “prosperous”, but also made it more “self-indulgent”, nihilistic”, and “balkanized”. The book extols President Clinton's accomplishments, such as the balanced budget (yes, with budget-cutting prods from the Republicans, but it was Clinton who raised the taxes that enabled the balance to occur), and welfare reform; but also fully exposes the Clintons' amoral (and Bill's sometimes immoral) natures. Clinton haters or Clinton loyalists may find the book wishy-washy or mealy-mouthed. The author is clearly a centrist moderate, and as a fellow moderate, I found his characterizations and insights spot-on.

I enjoyed the book very much, and would recommend it heartily.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Goodreads for my free copy of this book. As someone who was growing up when Clinton was President, I was only familiar with the big scandals. What I really liked about this was that Troy set the scene in America at the time in each chapter, showing where we were as a nation. It was a realistic review of Clinton's presidency, and I'm so glad the focus wasn't on the impeachment.

[Melanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book on a goodreads giveaway. Unfortunately I also never received the book, nor do I believe it has even been sent. Be wary about spending money on a book, they might just decide they don't feel like sending it.

[Frédérique]

Ironically (though the irony will be understandable to only a small subset of former McGill History students), this book reminded me of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"

[Beth Shultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting look at the 1990's. Yes, there is a lot about Clinton, but the cultural history was very good. A good read.

[KeAnne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good analysis of the Clinton years. Many times I felt like I could have been reading a book about today's issues. So much déjà vu. Good read.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A new view of the American 90s... thanks GOODREADS FOR THE FREE READ

[Dr.Suze · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent trip down memory lane, but nothing too compelling.