Blood Sport

The President and His Adversaries

By: James B. Stewart

Narrated by: Boyd Gaines

Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart takes readers behind the scenes in the Clinton White House as it reels in the wake of the Whitewater scandal, Vincent Foster’s suicide, and Paula Jones’ allegations of sexual misconduct.

In July 1993, White House official Vincent Foster wrote an anguished lament: “in Washington...ruining people is considered a sport.”

Nine days later, Foster was dead. Shock at the apparent suicide of one of President Clinton’s top aides turned to mystery, then suspicion, as the White House became engulfed in an ever-widening net of unanswered questions. Among the confidential matters Foster was working on when he died was the Clinton’s ill-fated investment in Whitewater, an Arkansas land development. Soon conspiracy theories were circulating, alleging that Foster was murdered because he knew too much. And the Whitewater affair, a minor footnote to the 1992 presidential campaign, was suddenly resurrected in the national media. To a degree that left them sunned and at times depressed, the president and the first lady have been buffeted by a succession of scandals, from the first lady's profitable commodities trading to the sexual harassment allegations of Paula Jones. Like his predecessors, the Clinton presidency son found itself engulfed in allegations of scandal, conspiracy, and cover-up.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews, many with people speaking publicly for the first time, James B. Stewart also sheds startling new light on these and other mysteries of the Clinton White House. In a fast-paced narrative that ranges from a backwater town in the Ozarks to the Oval Office, from newsrooms in New York and Los Angeles to offices of conservative think tanks and special prosecutors, the result is an unprecedented portrait of political combat as it is waged in America today.

An American Tragedy Long Forgotten.

Boyd Gaines does a fine job narrating a very controversial true crime story that disappeared under the radar by the time Hillary Rodham Clinton's husband secured the nomination for his second (far more corrupt) Presidential term. James Stewart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote what has to be the only fair and balanced account of Vincent Foster's tragic demise, which had far reaching consequences for then President Clinton and the hard right conservatives who wished to destroy him.

Great performance!

This book is really well done and researched. But the narrator really stole the show.

NOT about Kenneth Starr's investigation

If you read the summary of this book before buying, you might be very disappointed that though it does cover Whitewater in depth, it mostly looks at the history of Whitewater and the period of the Clinton presidency that Robert Fiske was special prosecutor investigating the Whitewater scandal. The book ends with Ken Starr being appointed special prosecutor, and barely covers any of his investigation, including nothing of impeachment. Clearly the summary was written in 1995 or 1996, but considering it's 2020 and we all know what happened, it's not okay that it still claims, "Blood Sport is the definitive account of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's potentially historic investigation of a president and first lady."

Other than that big let down of my expectations, the book is fantastic and offers rich details of the Clintons' real estate and commodity investments in Arkansas before moving to DC.

Abridgement leaves wanting

I was disappointed that the full book wasn’t available. Too many gaps in the story, but otherwise a decent performance.

Great book !

Very informative. Careful even-handed reporting by James Stewart. And great delivery by the narrator. Highly recommend.