Clinton wants U.S. ‘Back to Work’

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Bill Clinton

Updated: October 2, 2011 2:35AM

For Bill Clinton, it is again the economy, stupid. The former president has finished writing a new book, Back to Work, which Knopf will publish in November. In an interview with the Associated Press, he called the 200-page book a guide to the current economic slump, how it was caused and how to recover.

“I actually started thinking about [the book] after the 2010 election, because I did 130 events and after every event people would come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t know this,’ ‘I didn’t know that,’ ” Clinton said. “It was like the 21st-century version of the 1994 election, in which there was this enormously effective campaign against government, as if the government were responsible for all of this.”

Clinton said he began writing Back to Work in the spring, basing it on notes he has been compiling for years. He said he spends about an hour and a half each day studying the economy and wants the book to reinforce President Obama’s proposals, including his recent jobs plan and call for raising taxes on millionaires. Clinton said that Obama had been doing a “good job” communicating his ideas, but that he was up against a “chorus” of opponents who don’t like his ideas and don’t like government.

Colin Powell to write
of rules, life lessons

Colin Powell’s new book is a story of success. The retired four-star general and former secretary of state has a deal with HarperCollins to release It Worked for Me: Lessons in Leadership and Life in May 2012. According to the publisher, the book will include his 13 rules of leadership and “revealing personal stories.” One of Powell’s rules, “Get mad, then get over it,” will be tested in his book. HarperCollins spokeswoman Tina Andreadis declined to comment on whether Powell would respond to criticisms in recent memoirs by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or former Vice President Dick Cheney, both of whom Powell often clashed with while in the George W. Bush administration. Cheney’s In My Time noted their differences about the Iraq War and alleged that Powell was reluctant to express himself in Cabinet meetings. Powell has since said that Cheney’s book included “cheap shots.”

‘Total Recall’ in 2012

Arnold Schwarzenegger — bodybuilder, actor, former California governor and estranged husband of Maria Shriver — has an agreement with Simon & Schuster to publish a memoir in October 2012. The book’s working title is Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story. Schwarzenegger is collaborating with Peter Petre, who has worked on best sellers by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. The publisher is billing the book as “a larger-than-life portrait of his illustrious, controversial and ever-entertaining life in and out of the public eye.”