The former Special Counsel to President Clinton exposes the roots of today's scandal culture

Are sex scandals simply trivial distractions from serious issues or can they help democratize politics? In 1820, George IV's "royal gambols" with his mistresses endangered the Old Oak of the constitution. When he tried to divorce Queen Caroline for adultery, the resulting scandal enabled activists to overcome state censorship and revitalize reform. Looking at six major British scandals between 1763 and 1820, this book demonstrates that scandals brought people into politics because they evoked familiar stories of sex and betrayal. In vibrant prose woven with vivid character sketches and illustrations, Anna Clark explains that activists used these stories to illustrate constitutional issues concerning the Crown, Parliament, and public opinion. Clark argues that sex scandals grew out of the tension between aristocratic patronage and efficiency in government. For instance, in 1809 Mary Ann Clarke testified that she took bribes to persuade her royal lover, the army's commander-in-chief, to promote officers, buy government offices, and sway votes. Could women overcome scandals to participate in politics? This book also explains the real reason why the glamorous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, became so controversial for campaigning in a 1784 election. Sex scandal also discredited Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first feminists, after her death. Why do some scandals change politics while others fizzle? Edmund Burke tried to stir up scandal about the British empire in India, but his lurid, sexual language led many to think he was insane. A unique blend of the history of sexuality and women's history with political and constitutional history, Scandal opens a revealing new window onto some of the greatest sex scandals of the past. In doing so, it allows us to more fully appreciate the sometimes shocking ways democracy has become what it is today.

In Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars, Margot Gayle Backus charts the rise of the newspaper sex scandal across the fin de siècle British archipelago and explores its impact on the work of James Joyce, a towering figure of literary modernism. Based largely on archival research, the first three chapters trace the legal, social, and economic forces that fueled an upsurge in sex scandal over the course of the Irish Home Rule debates during James Joyce’s childhood. The remaining chapters examine Joyce’s use of scandal in his work throughout his career, beginning with his earliest known poem, “Et Tu, Healy,” written when he was nine years old to express outrage over the politically disastrous Parnell scandal. Backus’s readings of Joyce’s essays in a Trieste newspaper, the Dubliners short stories, Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses show Joyce’s increasingly intricate employment of scandal conventions, ingeniously twisted so as to disable scandal’s reifying effects. Scandal Work pursues a sequence of politically motivated sex scandals, which it derives from Joyce's work. It situates Joyce within an alternative history of the New Journalism’s emergence in response to the Irish Land Wars and the Home Rule debates, from the Phoenix Park murders and the first Dublin Castle scandal to “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” and the Oscar Wilde scandal. Her voluminous scholarship encompasses historical materials on Victorian and early twentieth-century sex scandals, Irish politics, and newspaper evolution as well as providing significant new readings of Joyce’s texts.

This book investigates the role of executive scandals in the contemporary American political landscape.

Athletes…they become like heroes. We read about them; talk about them; look up to them…but sometimes heroes let us down. And when they let us down they can change the game. This book looks at ten of the biggest profiles of all time.

The basis for the Emmy award-winning limited series starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw A behind-the-scenes look at the desperate, scandalous private life of a British MP and champion manipulator, and the history-making trial that exposed his dirty secrets While Jeremy Thorpe served as a Member of Parliament and Leader of the Liberal Party in the 1960s and 70s, his bad behavior went under the radar for years. Police and politicians alike colluded to protect one of their own. In 1970, Thorpe was the most popular and charismatic politician in the country, poised to hold the balance of power in a coalition government. But Jeremy Thorpe was a man with a secret. His homosexual affairs and harassment of past partners, along with his propensity for lying and embezzlement, only escalated as he evaded punishment. Until a dark night on the moor with an ex-lover, a dog and a hired gun led to consequences that even his charm and power couldn’t help him escape. Dubbed the “Trial of the Century,” Thorpe’s climactic case at the Old Bailey in London was the first time that a leading British politician had stood trial on a murder charge, the first time that a murder plot had been hatched in the House of Commons. And it was the first time that a prominent public figure had been exposed as a philandering gay man, in an era when homosexuality had only just become legal. With the pace and drama of a thriller, A Very English Scandal is an extraordinary story of hypocrisy, deceit and betrayal at the heart of the British Establishment.

A widely respected authority on national politics explores the world of post-Watergate Washington and provides the essential details to understand how government has become paralyzed by endless hearings and investigations. Updated to include new material on Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and Bill Clinton.