TAYLOR BRANCH: THE CLINTON TAPES
MONDAY, October 5, 2009, 6:30 p.m. Free. Reservations required. Please call 215.409.6700 or order online.
Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach
F.M. Kirby Auditorium
National Constitution Center
Independence Mall
525 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch discusses his account of President Bill Clinton’s confidential diary project conducted between 1993 and 2001. The Clinton Tapes provides a glimpse into the thought process and concerns of a sitting president and is based on 2,600 pages of material from the 78 sessions between the two men. Clinton shares spontaneous observations and personal details about events including war in Bosnia, health reform failure, anti-terrorist strikes, the 1996 re-election campaign, and Whitewater investigations culminating in his 1999 impeachment trial. Branch and President Clinton met in the Treaty Room, a second floor office of the White House, with the president in an informal mode, often talking late into the night.
“I’m not calling this a biography of Clinton or a history of the administration,” Mr. Branch told the New York Times. “It is what it was like to live through it that way, sitting alone with him, talking about the presidency as he saw it, right in the moment.”
Publishers Weekly describes The Clinton Tapes as an "absorbing inside account" of Clinton's White House years, with Branch distilling the president's "illuminating commentaries on the major issues." Readers will find "perceptive insights on Clinton's policies and magnetic personality."
The Clinton Tapes is Taylor Branch’s first book since completing America in the King Years 1954-68, his landmark trilogy on the modern civil rights era. Its first volume, Parting the Waters, won a Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Critics Circle award. Pillar of Fire won the Sidney Hillman Prize and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. At Canaan’s Edge has won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Harold Jackson moderates. Jackson is the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial page. He became deputy editor of the paper's Editorial Page in 2004, after being cooordinator of the newspaper's zoned daily commentary and Sunday Voices pages. Jackson has also been an editorial writer at the Baltimore Sun and the Birmingham (Ala.) News. While at the News, he and two colleagues won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1991 for a series on changing Alabama's tax system. He also worked for United Press International and the Birmingham Post-Herald.
A book sale and signing will follow the program courtesy of Joseph Fox Bookshop. Parking for this event is available for $7.00 at the National Constitution Center garage located at the rear of the building on Race Street between 5th and 6th Streets. Parking availability is subject to change, so please call the Constitution Center on the day of the program or check our web site for more information. Please also see our directions by public transportation..
For reservations please call 215.409.6700 or order online. Programs at the National Constitution Center begin promptly and latecomers may not be admitted to the program. Please note that this program is subject to change.
Related Links:
The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President
Taylor Branch