“This book is a fascinating analysis of race and class in the age of President Bill Clinton. It provides much-needed clarity in regards to the myth of the ‘First Black President.’ It contributes much to our understanding of the history that informs our present moment!”
—Cornel West

“Race had everything to do with the steady rise of the Republican Party after the 1964 election, and during Clinton’s remaking of the Democratic Party he often tweaked the party’s positions in a direction meant to bring white voters back into the fold. Daryl Carter’s Brother Bill is a long, patient recitation of these efforts. … Carter writes in a deliberately measured, even sweet-natured voice that puts his account at a far remove tonally from, say, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow or Ava DuVernay’s documentary film 13th. He gives Clinton credit for saving affirmative action at a time when it was under severe attack, as it isn’t now. He reminds us that the crime and welfare bills Clinton signed had strong black support in polls at the time and that many black members of Congress voted for both; today, black voters, especially younger ones, are far more critical of these measures.”

—Nicholas Lemann, The New York Review of Books, June 2017

“In Brother Bill, historian Daryl A. Carter digs deep into the hot-button racial issues of the 1990s to interrogate popular conceptions of Bill Clinton as the first “black” president. Not surprisingly, Carter unearths a complicated relationship between African Americans and the Clinton agenda. Class, rather than race, motivated many of the president’s actions. Eager to maintain support from white moderates, Clinton promoted policies that benefited the middle class—including the growing black middle class—while ignoring or even harming the African American underclass. … Carter demonstrates a solid grasp of his subject matter and has made good use of an array of primary and secondary sources ranging from government reports to contemporary news articles to recent historical and sociological writings. A handful of oral histories lend his discussion a personal flair. His insistence that historians of recent America must do a better job of untangling the complex interplay between class and race is a highlight of Brother Bill.”

—David Welky, H-Net FedHist, June 2017