Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

Imperial Palace grounds. This time we would attend a formal dinner on the inside, hosted by the Emperor and Empress. Gentle, artistic and intelligent, this engaging couple embody the grace of their nation’s art as well as the serenity of the peaceful gardens I finally visited while at the Palace. During this trip I also met with a group of prominent Japanese women―the first of dozens of such meetings that I held around the world―to learn about the issues women were facing everywhere.

I was especially pleased that my mother could come with us on the trip. I thought she could use a radical change of scenery to help her deal with my father’s death. She had a great time with us in Japan and Korea, and then she and I met Chelsea in Hawaii where I attended a meeting about Hawaii’s statewide health care system. On July 20, Chelsea and I flew to Arkansas to drop off my mother and to visit some friends. That night, sometime between eight and nine o’clock, Mack McLarty called me at my mother’s house and told me he had terrible news: Vince Foster was dead; it looked like a suicide.

I was so staggered that I still can’t sort out the sequence of events that night. I remember crying and questioning Mack. I just couldn’t believe it. Was he sure there wasn’t a mistake? Mack gave me some sketchy details about the body discovered in a park, the handgun at the scene, a gunshot wound in the head. He wanted my advice about when to tell the President. At that moment Bill was appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live from the White House and had just agreed to go into an extra half hour. Mack asked me if I thought Bill should finish the show. I thought Mack should cut the interview short so he could tell Bill as soon as possible. I couldn’t bear the idea of Bill being told on live TV

about the tragic death of one of his closest friends.

As soon as Mack got off the line, I told my mother and Chelsea. Then I started dialing everyone I could think of who knew Vince, hoping someone could shed light on how and why this could have happened.

I craved information like oxygen. I was frantic because I felt so far away, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. As soon as Bill finished the show, I called him. He sounded shell-shocked and kept saying, “How could this have happened?” and “I should have stopped it somehow.” Immediately after I talked to Bill, he went to the town house Vince and Lisa had rented in Georgetown. In one of our numerous calls, he told me how Webb was a pillar of strength and efficiency, taking charge of the funeral that would be held in Little Rock, making the travel arrangements, doing everything that needed to be done for the family. I’ll always be grateful to Webb for that, and when I spoke to him, I offered to help in any way I could. I also talked with Lisa and with Vince’s sister Sheila.

None of us could believe what we were being told. We were all still clinging to an irrational hope that this awful nightmare stemmed from a misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity.

I called Maggie Williams, who was devoted to Vince and saw him daily. All she could do was sob, so both of us tried to talk through our tears. I called Susan Thomases, who had known Vince since the 1980s. I called Tipper Gore and asked her if she thought we should bring in counselors to educate the staff about depression. Tipper was both comforting and informative, explaining that many suicides come as a surprise because we don’t know how to read the warning signs.

I stayed up all night crying and talking to friends. I wondered ceaselessly whether this tragedy could have been prevented if I or anyone had noticed something amiss in Vince’s behavior. When The Wall Street Journal editorial page had started pillorying him, I told him to ignore the stories―advice that was easy for me to give but, it seems, impossible for Vince to take. He told mutual friends that he and his friends and clients had always read the Journal in Arkansas and he couldn’t imagine facing those people after they saw the stories about him.

Vince’s funeral service was held in Little Rock’s St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Vince wasn’t Catholic, but Lisa and the children were, and holding it there meant a great deal to them. Bill spoke eloquently of the special man whom he had known all his life, and he ended by quoting a Leon Russell song, “I love you in a place that has no space or time. I love you for my life. You are a friend of mine.”

After the service, we drove in a long, mournful caravan to Hope, where Vince was born and raised. It was a blazing summer day, and heat rose in waves over the dusty fields. Vince was buried just outside of town. By then I was beyond words. Numb. All I could feel was a vague notion that Vince was finally safe now, back home where he belonged.

The days that followed seemed to pass in slow motion as we tried to resume a normal routine. But all of us who were close to Vince were still obsessed with the question Why?

Maggie was especially heartbroken. Bernie Nussbaum was beside himself that he had been with Vince the morning of his death and never had a clue. It had been the best week for the counsel’s office since the inauguration. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on her way to a seat on the Supreme Court, and just that morning the President had named Judge Louis Freeh as the new FBI Director. Bernie thought Vince seemed relaxed, even lighthearted.

As I learned more about clinical depression, however, I began to understand that Vince may have appeared happy because