CAPITAL GAMES - CLARENCE THOMAS, ANITA HILL, AND THE STORY OF A SUPREME COURT NOMINATION
Product Description
by Timothy M. Phelps and Helen Winternitz
Not since Watergate has the attention of the nation been so completely captivated by events in Washington as it was in the Fall of 1991 during Clarence Thomas's nomination hearings. The combustible mix of race, sex, and the Supreme Court exploded in a scandal that preempted everything the networks had to offer. No soap opera or courtroom drama could equal the capitol games being played as millions watched on television. Timothy Phelps, the Newsday reporter who broke the story about Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, and co-author, Helen Winternitz, present a riveting chronicle of events--in Washington and in the lives of Thomas and Hill--leading up to the hearings, then take readers behind the scenes in a first-rate piece of investigative reporting. Here is everything you didn't see on television: offstage maneuvers, strong-arm tactics, crucial lapses in judgment, and brutal power plays. These extraordinary hearings pitted blacks against whites (as well as other blacks), men against women, and Left against Right, and touched on just about every benchmark issue of our day: abortion rights, the fate of the Supreme Court, the validity of affirmative action programs, and an explosive new item on the national agenda, sexual harassment in the workplace. Above all, the Thomas hearings thrust center stage the rough and tumble politicking that is everyday business in the Capital. From the moment President Bush introduced his candidate to fill the seat of retiring civil rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall, politics permeated the public perception of Clarence Thomas. Few in the media, or the country at large, believe Bush's claim that Thomas's race had nothing to do with his nomination. Capitol Games details for the first time how Thomas positioned himself as a black conservative in Washington under the mentorship of a lobbyist for the government of South Africa. Here, too, are insider accounts of how Thomas was selected, and of how the ra
Hardcover: 458 pages
Not since Watergate has the attention of the nation been so completely captivated by events in Washington as it was in the Fall of 1991 during Clarence Thomas's nomination hearings. The combustible mix of race, sex, and the Supreme Court exploded in a scandal that preempted everything the networks had to offer. No soap opera or courtroom drama could equal the capitol games being played as millions watched on television. Timothy Phelps, the Newsday reporter who broke the story about Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, and co-author, Helen Winternitz, present a riveting chronicle of events--in Washington and in the lives of Thomas and Hill--leading up to the hearings, then take readers behind the scenes in a first-rate piece of investigative reporting. Here is everything you didn't see on television: offstage maneuvers, strong-arm tactics, crucial lapses in judgment, and brutal power plays. These extraordinary hearings pitted blacks against whites (as well as other blacks), men against women, and Left against Right, and touched on just about every benchmark issue of our day: abortion rights, the fate of the Supreme Court, the validity of affirmative action programs, and an explosive new item on the national agenda, sexual harassment in the workplace. Above all, the Thomas hearings thrust center stage the rough and tumble politicking that is everyday business in the Capital. From the moment President Bush introduced his candidate to fill the seat of retiring civil rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall, politics permeated the public perception of Clarence Thomas. Few in the media, or the country at large, believe Bush's claim that Thomas's race had nothing to do with his nomination. Capitol Games details for the first time how Thomas positioned himself as a black conservative in Washington under the mentorship of a lobbyist for the government of South Africa. Here, too, are insider accounts of how Thomas was selected, and of how the ra
Hardcover: 458 pages
