From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency

William Berman transcends the familiar mass of gossip, punditry, and political trivia to examine Bill Clinton’s administration in the broad context of recent American political history and structural economic change. This is the wisest book on the Clinton era…. — Leo P. Ribuffo

William Berman has established the framework and agenda for serious historical consideration of the Clinton presidency. This is a thoughtful work, that properly measures seismic shifts in economic and cultural life, as well as the evolving nature of the presidency, and takes us far beyond the momentary obsession with trivia and gossip. We are in his debt…. — Stanley Kutler

Berman concisely chronicles Clinton’s presidency, with its wild swings between policy success and personal and political crisis…..

The ‘edge’ of the book’s title refers to the humiliating Capitol Hill inquiry arising from Clinton’s Oval Office dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Yet Berman, author of three previous volumes on contemporary U.S. politics, has mostly managed to avoid that abyss. Instead he offers a concise, balanced recounting of the cascade of political maneuvers that occurred in an almost manically busy, explosively reactive period of Washington politics. His focus, like Clinton’s, mostly dwells on domestic affairs…. — Gavin Scott