This is probably the most focused and serious book I've read by Mr. Tyrrell. He clearly suppressed his considerable talent for amusingly limning the Clintons as the clowns that they are to deliver instead a steady, updated, and well-informed account of what they are up to and why we need to remain concerned with their machinations. The Clintons takeover and manipulations of the Democratic Party are described well and documented early in the book. The Clintons today, as demonstrated by Tyrrell and Davis, bring things to the Democratic Party that allow them to shape it and perhaps even control it. Namely, these things are star status among the liberal true believers from the gays to the feminists to the muddle-minded suburban housewives, connections to Hollywood, and more important in the today's Democratic Party than the other things, they bring money. Hillary is a major player at collecting it and distributing it to those who play the game she wants them to play. This doling out of funding has made her a player who is, in the words of the authors, "Steering the Senate." Hillary's quick emergence to high power and other examples in the book about someone whom most of us never thought could get elected to the US Senate should cause us to take seriously Tyrrell's suspicions that Hillary is aligning herself to move back into the White House.

The Clintons efforts to take further control of the Democratic Party can be seen in the information and examples the authors offer up. Some of these examples provided of how they are doing this are their setting up of a Left Wing Think Tank [the Center for American Progress], their advocating and supporting the setting up of openly left wing TV and radio, Hillary's HILLPAC and Hill's Angels, their ties to Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe and billionaire left-wing Bush hater George Soros, their ties to union leaders like John Sweeney President of the AFL-CIO, their continued hold on the greatest Hollywood fund raisers, and Bill Clintons ability to motivate black voters are just a few of the topics the authors discuss in their outline of the Clintonian techniques for controlling the party.

In their chapter "Livid History," the authors provided information of particular interests to me. Here Tyrrell and Davis reviewed Hilary's 8 million dollar book Living History. Tyrrell and Davis recount all the reckless and gratuitous mendacities Hillary tried to put behind her in her version of history as she described it. As the authors see it, Hillary tackled these controversies to assure her political viability and to make her political rise all the more possible, so she spun stories about the scandals that have surrounded her and her husband. ... To set the record straight, Tyrrell and Davis perforce deftly debunk Hillary's portrayal of Watergate, Travel Gate, Foster Gate, Cattle Futures Gate, Trooper Gate, Monica Gate, and Pardon Gate, to name a few. The authors depict Hillary as a sort of Left Wing John Bircher able to crank out weird conspiracy theories in order to avoid accountability and to distract people from the truth. Then there are the names that bring back the memories of the tawdry years when the nation was unable to purge itself of these two "coat and tie radicals" as Tyrrell likes to call them. There are Craig Livingstone, Betsey Wright, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Vincent Foster, and Monica Lewinsky to name a few. Hillary may want us to forget about these people and other scandals, but as the authors point out she couldn't resist trying to have the final word in her book with ridiculous accounts that the authors prove to be self-serving lies. They also remind us of the Clinton tactic for dealing with scandal, which in brief was "1) Vigorously deny a given charge. 2) Question the motives of an accuser or any accessory to the charge (reporters, prosecutors, victims). 3) Or recast the charge in a sweet or melancholy way: "Oh, how sad," or "I don't know if I can go on." 4) Vilify anyone still interested in the charge as an obsessive, a Clinton-hater, a sucker for "old news"..."

The authors point out how quickly Hillary has been forgiven and given newfound respect. Those who only a few years ago were finally on to the Clintons after pardon Gate and their stealing from the White House as they left Washington for New York even now look the other way and show respect to Senator Clinton when she demands explanations from President Bush. This collective amnesia is yet another reason to take seriously Tyrrell's concerns that Hillary might be actually able to mount a successful campaign for president.

There is much more to this book, and I hope it receives the audience it truly deserves. All Americans concerned with current events should read this book.

The Clintons and their scandals are hardly old news, given that she is a powerful US Senator and presumptive candidate for the presidency. Bob Tyrrell has had the Clintons' number from the beginning. And in this book, he picks up the late Barbara Olsen's torch as the writer with perhaps the clearest understanding of Hillary Clinton, her deeply radical, if deeply camouflaged, designs for our country, her lust for power, and how she intends to go about winning it.

The problem is that the Clintons arouse such strong feelings, both pro and con, that it can be difficult to separate the facts from the *Kultursmog* (such a great word -- I've admired it for years). Tyrrell and coauthor Mark Davis have done the heavy lifting for us, giving us chapter-and-verse not only on the Clintons' Arkansas and White House years, but also Madame Hillary's journey "from Methodism to Maoism" (p. 120) and into the ranks of Coat and Tie Radicals. Like Olsen, Tyrrell sees the heavy hand of Saul Alinsky not only in her early radical years, but also in her approach to politics and power even today. This is enlightening and disturbing reading.

I've always suspected that one of the things the Left hates most about Bob Tyrrell is not just that he skewers them so thoroughly, but that he has such fun doing it (Ann Coulter commits this sin too). This book "was a pleasure to write," he notes on page 209, and I have no doubt he means it. It was a pleasure to read, too. Tyrrell has always had a way with language that recalls some of the great polemicists, Mencken being the most obvious comparison. But the key to Tyrrell is that he backs up his entertaining and sometimes idiosyncratic language not only with solid research -- kudos to coauthor Davis here -- but also with a rational train of argument and conclusions that flow logically from the facts presented (far be it from me to suggest Ann Coulter sometimes parts company with him here, to say nothing of scurrilous windbags like Michael Moore, but I can see how you might reach that conclusion).

Hillary Clinton is going to remain a political force in this country for a long time to come. So long as she does, this book will be an important reminder not only of the fraudulence of her so-called "accomplishments" (which are what ... exactly?), but also of her true motivations, goals, and a track record that -- Point Four above notwithstanding -- should be much on the mind of the American voter. That makes "Madame Hillary" a book to keep handy for the next decade or so, at least.