If the Watergate scandal was a previous generation’s National Nightmare, then maybe the Clinton scandal was our National Wet Dream, and who better to narrate it than the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas, whose credits include Basic Instinct and Showgirls, and Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse, for which he was nominated for a National Book Award, takes us through the events that threatened to topple a president and left most of the nation’s citizens with, at the very least, a bad taste in their mouths.

Taking full advantage of his considerable journalistic and storytelling talents, Eszterhas gives us every fact, rumor, or innuendo surrounding the president’s foibles in the context of late century American politics and entertainment. Here Washington and Hollywood do more than just flirt with each other; they share the same bed. From scandalmongers Matt Drudge (who began as a Hollywood gossip) and Ken Starr, to would-be president paramours Sharon Stone and Barbra Streisand, to his final, unimpeachable witness, Willard-none other than President Clinton’s talking penis-Eszterhas gives us the goods on the story that nobody could stop talking about and, thanks to American Rhapsody, will be impossible to think about the same way again.