Naked Presidents: An Alternate History

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His term (or terms) might have played out very messily considering what time period he would have served in (would anyone really have wanted to be in the Oval Office in 1968? By contrast, his allohistorical path with Clinton is more tortured, as Silver makes him a general in the 1980s so that he can stop the Iran-Contra affair (which, as he points out in an insightful aside, would have been perceived as more scandalous without Watergate to compare it to) before entering electoral politics. It was refreshing to see a novel that didn't make a "Kennedy survives his assasination" plot into the second coming for America.

Other authors have made such an effort in nonfiction works, so Silver’s novel is a change of pace in that regard. I could have done without the cutesy attempts at humor -- a few sentences on legalizing marijuana would have been interesting without pulling a character from Animal House.Also problematic is the disconnect between the two periods; apart from the different path onto which Kennedy’s decisions send the young Bill Clinton, there is no real sense of how the events in the 1960s might have influenced those of two and three decades later (and Silver argues for some radical changes as a result of Kennedy’s survival). The Vietnam era generation (of which I am not) and those longing for the success of the 90's will appreciate the intertwining of worlds both invented, inverted, and completely true--as JFK survives Dallas, Clinton is a whistle blower, Sinatra lives the latter part of his life sans tongue--while sex permeates the novel just enough to make it as slick as the real and reinvented presidents who play the lead roles. It’s premised on a reversal of historical fate, which allows him to show how differently historical reputations might have evolved for two men with similar problems. Keep in mind that anyone can view public collections - they may also appear in recommendations and other places. Allen’s stories, and those of many other White House residence staff, are revealed in detail in a new book “The Residence,” by author Kate Andersen Brower.

By contrast Bill Clinton’s presidency is cut short by his assassination on November 22, 1995, thus leaving him a martyred president with no extramarital dalliance in the White House to sully his historical reputation. They have their public face and their private face, and when we were around, it was the public face. The shocking surprise ending will leave the reader wondering what is reality and what is fantasy after all.

But while political junkies find that event and its aftermath a bottomless source for conspiracy theorizing, it is to Silver an instrument for a greater and more contemporary political purpose, and indeed a tool for destroying conspiracy theories altogether. It provides an unusual perspective Bill Clinton, but ultimately squanders the promise offered by the premise to create a fully realized alternate history.

I find it a bit of a hard stretch on the career Air Force thing (not that he was cowardly, I just think he would have transitioned into the private sector/ political arena sooner). You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.In this quirky, yet fascinating book, James Silver turns History inside out to show what might have happened. g., Clinton as an Army General) but those with an open mind and a sense of humor, and particularly historians, should find much to ponder (the way in which Ken Starr becomes a Supreme Court Justice is only one of many, many inventive twists). The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.