Journalists write the first draft of history. Bill Clinton provided the second—and subsequent revisions—with his 957-page autobiography, My Life, in 2004. Now we get the footnotes.

Taylor Branch’s thick new book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, is the product of more than 80 free-form conversations the Pulitzer-prize-winning author recorded with the former U.S. commander-in-chief during his eight years in office. Intimate, often late-night bull sessions between two old friends (Clinton, Branch and Hillary all worked together on George McGovern’s 1972 Democratic campaign), the semi-regular chats were an effort to capture the details of White House deliberations, crises and victories while they were still fresh. Not so much the period’s great events, as its backstage moments. Continue…