Journalist and essayist Christopher Hitchens's polemic on the political career of American president Bill Clinton. Hitchens examines Clinton's psychology and how it affected the then-president's record in war, acts that led to accusations of sexual abuse, his skill at "triangulation" and his relationship with his wife Hillary.
Discussing the book on the April 28, 1999, episode of Charlie Rose, Hitchens said he wrote the book to criticize what he perceived as Clinton's political corruption and conservatism, seeing them as mutually reinforcing. He also criticizes many American liberals for their support of Clinton.
Paperback edition
Its re-publication in paperback in 2000 featured expanded content, a new subtitle (The Values of the Worst Family), and an additional image of Hillary Clinton on the front cover.[5]
Reception
No One Left to Lie To drew polarized responses. Referring to the work as "at once illuminating and depressing", Stephen Thompson of The A.V. Club wrote that Hitchens "ultimately does an excellent and revelatory job of not only breaking down Clinton's various alleged and provable offenses [...] but tying them together, making a case for how his much-discussed character flaws actually affect his ability to serve the people."[6]Nick Cohen of The Observer defended Hitchens's comparison of Clinton's America to a banana republic, and praised the chapter on the president's war crimes.[7]Edward Said of Al-Ahram Weekly praised the book as "By far the best of all the books on the Clinton era".[8][9]
Louis Menand writing in The New York Times Magazine said that the book fed the reader's confirmation bias, that it served to "confirm every prejudice you ever had on the subject, plus a few you might not even have known you had".[10][11] In the London Review of Books, Martin Jay criticized the lack of footnotes and argued that "the book is itself an extended op-ed piece, resting more on avid belief and strongly held opinions than hard, dispassionately presented knowledge, and liberally drawing on its author's formidable rhetorical skills to convince the reader. Hitchens's argument is based on a welter of assertions about Clinton's actions – many of which, I hasten to add, are all too plausible – that are never backed up in a convincing way by verifiable sources".[12] Charles Taylor of Salon accused Hitchens of making unsubstantiated accusations and wrote that "the damnable thing about No One Left to Lie To is that had Hitchens focused on [Clinton's triangulations], he might have produced a very compelling and very damaging book."[13]Karen Lehrman of The New York Times, while lauding "Hitchens's brave willingness to show all the sordid scenarios in which our emperor has removed his clothes", found the book emotionally undisciplined in the depth of its negativity toward Clinton, writing that the author "is appalled by virtually everything the President does."[2]
