CARL BERNSTEIN'S stunning portrait of HillaryRodham Clinton shows us, as nothing elsehas, the true trajectory of her life and career with its zigzag bursts of risks taken and safety sought. Marshaling all the skills and energy that propelled his
history-making Pulitzer Prize reporting on Water- gate, Bernstein gives us the most detailed, sophisti-cated, comprehensive, and revealing account we havehad of the complex human being and political meteor who has already helped define one presidency and may well become, herself, the woman in charge of
another.
We see the shaping of Hillary as a self-described"mind conservative and heart liberal"--her osten-sibly idyllic Midwestern girlhood (her mother a nur-turer, but her father a disciplinarian, harsher than shehas acknowledged); her early development of deepreligious feelings; her curiosity fueled by dedicatedteachers, by exposure to Martin Luther King Jr., by the ferment of the sixties, and, above all, by a desire to change the world. At Wellesley, we watch Hillary, a Republican turned Democrat, thriving in the new sky's-the-limit freedom for women, already perceived as a spokeswoman for her generation, her commence- ment speech celebrated in Life magazine. And the book takes us to Yale Law School as Hillary meets and
falls in love with Bill Clinton and cancels her dreamto go her own way, to New
her fortune, instead, to hisYork or Washington, tyingin Arkansas.