First Partner, The

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a formidable, fascinating, enigmatic woman, and this provocative, probing biography - in the works for over two years - offers real insight into her character, her values, and her career.

Joyce Milton offers a meticulously detailed chronicle of Mrs. Clinton's life: her midwestern childhood; her first Washington stint as a legal staffer in the Watergate investigation; her ambiguous dual role in Arkansas as a public interest lawyer and a politician's wife; and her tumultuous White House years as the most controversial First Lady in America's history - and now the most visibly wronged woman in the world.

Milton offers new perspectives on the firestorms that have raged about the First lady, from the healthcare fiasco to Whitewater and Vince Foster's suicide, to her husband's chronic infidelity and the scandals that have threatened the Clinton legacy and, ironically, have cast Hillary Clinton in a new, more sympathetic role. Milton also examines her attempts to reconcile a host of contradictions - feminist convictions in painful collision with family commitment; philosophical beliefs in conflict with harsh political reality; the precarious balance between professional ambition, public image, and private life.

Lively and even-handed, this biography is sure to be required reading - and listening.