Name	Beijing
Official name	Municipality of Beijing •
Native name
Settlement type	Municipality
Total type	Municipality
Map caption	Location of Beijing Municipality within China
Coordinates display	inline,title
Coordinates region	CN-11
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision name	People's Republic of China
Parts type	Divisions - County-level - Township-level
Parts	16 districts, 2 counties289 towns and villages
Government type	Municipality
Leader title	CPC Ctte Secretary
Leader name	Liu Qi
Leader title1	Mayor
Leader name1	Guo Jinlong
Area total km2	16801.25
Elevation m	43.5
Population total	19612368
Population as of	2010
Population density km2	auto
Population blank1 title	Ranks in China
Population blank1	Population: 26th; Density: 4th
Population demonym	Beijinger
Demographics type1	Major ethnic groups
Demographics1 title1	Han
Demographics1 info1	96%
Demographics1 title2	Manchu
Demographics1 info2	2%
Demographics1 title3	Hui
Demographics1 info3	2%
Demographics1 title4	Mongol
Demographics1 info4	0.3%
Timezone	China standard time
Utc offset	+8
Postal code type	Postal code
Postal code	100000 – 102629
Area code	10
Blank name sec1	GDP
Blank info sec1	2010
Blank1 name sec1	- Total
Blank1 info sec1	CNY 1,377.79 billion US$ 209.3 billion (13th)
Blank2 name sec1	- Per capita
Blank2 info sec1	CNY 70,251 US$ 10,672 (3rd)
Blank3 name sec1	- Growth
Blank3 info sec1	10.2%
Blank4 name sec1	HDI (2008)
Blank4 info sec1	0.891 (2nd) – high
Blank5 name sec1	License plate prefixes
Blank5 info sec1	京A, C, E, F, H, J, K, L, M, N, P 京B (taxis)京G, Y (outside urban area)京O (police and authorities)京V (in red color) (military headquarters,central government)
Blank name sec2	City trees
Blank info sec2	Chinese arborvitae (''Platycladus orientalis'')
Blank1 name sec2
Blank1 info sec2	Pagoda tree (''Sophora japonica'')
Blank2 name sec2	City flowers
Blank2 info sec2	China rose (''Rosa chinensis'')
Blank3 name sec2
Blank3 info sec2	Chrysanthemum (''Chrysanthemum morifolium'')
Website	www.beijing.gov.cn
Footnotes	}}

Beijing (, , ), also known as Peking ( or ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, educational and military center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's largest state-owned companies. The metropolis, located in northern China, borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and a small section to the east, and Tianjin Municipality to the southeast.

Governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the national government, Beijing is divided into 14 urban and suburban districts and two rural counties. It is a major transportation hub, with dozens of railways, roads and motorways passing through the city, and the destination of many international flights to China.

Few cities in the world have served as long as the political and cultural centre of an area as immense. Beijing is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It has been the heart of China’s history for centuries, and there is scarcely a major building of any age in Beijing that does not have at least some national historical significance. The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, and huge stone walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have long made it a centre of culture and art in China.

Etymology and names

"Beijing" means "northern capital", following the common East Asian tradition of explicitly naming capitals as such. Similarly named cities include Nanjing (南京), China, meaning "southern capital"; Tokyo, Japan, and Đông Kinh, now Hanoi, Vietnam, both meaning "eastern capital" (東京); as well as Kyoto (京都), Japan, and Gyeongseong (; now Seoul), Korea, both meaning "capital city".

Peking is the name of the city according to Chinese Postal Map Romanisation, and the traditional customary name for Beijing in English. It, together with its variants, is still used in many languages. The name originated with French missionaries four hundred years ago and corresponds to an older pronunciation predating a sound change in Mandarin from to . ( is represented in pinyin as j, as in Beijing. The latter is best approximated in English as "bay-DJING", rather than the hyperforeign pronunciation "bay-ZHING".) The pronunciation "Peking" is also closer to the Fujianese dialect of Amoy or Min Nan spoken in the city of Xiamen, a port where European traders first landed in the 16th century, while "Beijing" more closely approximates the Mandarin pronunciation of the city's name.

The city has been renamed several times. During the Jin Dynasty, it was known as Zhongdu (), then later, under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, as Dadu () to the Chinese and Daidu to Mongols (also recorded as Cambuluc by Marco Polo). Twice in the city's history, the name was changed from Beijing (Peking) to Beiping (Peiping) (; Pinyin: Běipíng; Wade-Giles: Pei-p'ing), literally "northern peace", first under the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and again in 1928 by the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China. On each occasion, the character meaning "capital" (京) was deleted to reflect the fact the national capital had moved to Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province. Each renaming was reverted, the first under the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who moved the capital from Nanjing back to Beijing, and again in 1949, when the Communist Party of China restored Beijing as its capital after the founding of the People's Republic of China. The abbreviation of the municipality is its second character (京) and is used on licence plates, among other things.

Yanjing (; Pinyin: Yānjīng; Wade-Giles: Yen-ching) is and has been another popular informal name for Beijing, a reference to the ancient State of Yan that existed here during the Zhou Dynasty. This name is reflected in the locally brewed Yanjing Beer as well as Yenching University, an institution of higher learning that was merged into Peking University.

History

Early history

The earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. ''Homo erectus'' fossils from the caves date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic ''homo sapiens'' also lived there more recently, about 27,000 years ago. There were cities in the vicinity of the site of present-day Beijing by the 1st millennium BC, and Ji (薊/蓟), the capital of the state of Yan, one of the powers of the Warring States Period (473–221 BC), was established there.

After the fall of the Yan, the following Qin, Han, and Jin dynasties set up local prefectures in the area. During the fall of the Han, it was the seat of the warlord Gongsun Zan. During the Tang Dynasty, it became the headquarters for Fanyang jiedushi, the virtual military governor of what is now the northern Hebei region. The An Shi Rebellion began here in AD 755.

Medieval period

In 936, the Later Jin Dynasty (936–947) of northern China ceded a large part of its northern frontier, including the site of modern Beijing, to the Khitan Liao Dynasty. In 938, the Liao Dynasty set up a secondary capital on modern Beijing's location, and called it Nanjing (the "southern capital"). In 1125, the Jurchen Jin Dynasty conquered Liao, and moved its capital to Liao's Nanjing in 1153, calling it Zhongdu (中都), the "central capital". Zhongdu was situated in what is now the area centered around Tianningsi, slightly to the southwest of central Beijing. Some of the oldest surviving relics in Beijing, such as the Tianning Temple, date to the Liao period.

Mongol forces burned Zhongdu to the ground in 1215 in what is now known as the Battle of Beijing. In 1264, in preparation for the conquest of all of China to establish the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan decided to rebuild it slightly north to the center of the Jin capital, and in 1272, he made this city his capital, renamed Dadu (大都, Chinese for "great capital"), or Daidu to the Mongols, spelled Cambaluc or Cambuluc in Marco Polo's accounts. Construction of Dadu was completed in 1293. Kublai Khan's decision greatly enhanced the status of a city on the northern fringe of China proper. Dadu was centered slightly north of modern central Beijing, on what is now the northern stretch of the 2nd Ring Road, and stretched northwards to between the 3rd and 4th Ring Roads. Remnants of the Yuan-era wall still stand, and are known as the Tucheng (土城, literally the "earth wall").

Ming and Qing period

In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang, soon after declaring himself the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, sent an army toward Dadu, still held by the Yuan. The last Yuan emperor fled north to Shangdu, and Zhu razed the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground. The city was renamed Beiping (北平) in the same year, and Shuntian (順天) prefecture was established in the area around the city. In 1403, the new (and third) Ming emperor – the Yongle Emperor – renamed this city Beijing, and designated it the co-capital, alongside the (then) current capital of Nanjing. Beijing was the site of a major construction project for a new Imperial residence, the Forbidden City that lasted nearly 15 years, from 1406 to 1420. When the palace was finished, the Yongle Emperor ceremoniously took up residence. From 1421 onwards, Beijing, also known as Jingshi (京师), was the "official" capital of the Ming Dynasty, while Nanjing was demoted to the status of "secondary" capital. This system of dual capitals (with Beijing being vastly more important) continued for the duration of the Ming Dynasty. Thirteen of the sixteen Ming Emperors are buried in elaborate tombs near Beijing.

By the 15th century, Beijing had essentially taken its current shape. The Ming-era city wall served as the Beijing city wall until modern times, when it was pulled down and the 2nd Ring Road was built in its place. It is believed that Beijing was the largest city in the world from 1425 to 1650 and from 1710 to 1825. Another notable building constructed during the Ming period was the Temple of Heaven (built by 1420). Tiananmen, now a state symbol of the People's Republic of China and featured on its emblem, was first built in 1420, and rebuilt several times later. Tiananmen Square was built in 1651 and enlarged in 1958. Jesuits finished building the first Beijing-area Roman Catholic church in 1652 at the Xuanwu Gate, where Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) had lived; the modern Nantang (南堂, Southern Cathedral) has been built over the original cathedral.

The end of the Ming came in 1644, when Li Zicheng's peasant army captured and held Beijing for 40 days, and overthrew the government. When the powerful Manchu army arrived at the outskirts, Li and his followers abandoned the city, allowing the Manchus, under Prince Dorgon, to capture Beijing without a fight.

When Dorgon established the Qing Dynasty as the direct successor of the Ming, Beijing remained China's capital. The Qing emperors made some modifications to the Imperial residence, but in large part, the Ming buildings and the general layout remained unchanged. Beijing at this time was also known as Jingshi. The classic Chinese novel ''Dream of the Red Chamber'' is set in Beijing during the early years of Qing rule at the end of the 17th century.

During the Second Opium War, Anglo-French forces captured the city, and looted and burned the Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace in 1860. Under the Convention of Peking that ended the war, Western powers secured the right to establish permanent diplomatic presences in the Beijing Legation Quarter. In 1900, Beijing was again invaded by foreign powers, this time to quell the Boxer Rebellion. Some important Imperial structures in the city were destroyed during the fighting, including the Hanlin Academy and the Summer Palace.

Republican era

The fomenters of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 sought to replace Qing rule with a republic, and originally intended to establish the capital at Nanjing. After high-ranking Qing official Yuan Shikai forced the abdication of the Qing emperor in Beijing and ensured the success of the revolution, the revolutionaries in Nanjing accepted Yuan as the president of the new Republic of China, and the capital remained at Beijing. Yuan gradually consolidated power and became by 1915 the new emperor of China, but died less than a year into his reign.

China then fell under the control of regional warlords. The most powerful factions fought frequent wars (the Zhili-Anhui War, the First Zhili-Fengtian War, and the Second Zhili-Fengtian War) to take control of the capital. Following the success of the Kuomintang (KMT)'s Northern Expedition, which pacified the warlords of the north, Nanjing was officially made the capital of the Republic of China in 1928, and on 28 June of that year, Beijing was renamed Beiping (Peip'ing) (北平), meaning "northern peace" or "north pacified".

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Beiping fell to Japan on 29 July 1937, and was made the seat of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state that ruled the ethnic Chinese portions of Japanese-occupied northern China; the government was later merged into the larger Wang Jingwei government based in Nanjing.

People's Republic

On 31 January 1949, during the Chinese Civil War, Communist forces entered Beijing without opposition. On 1 October of the same year, the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, announced in Tiananmen the creation of the People's Republic of China and renamed the city back to Beijing. Just a few days earlier, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference had decided that Beijing would be the capital of the new government.

At the time of the founding of the People's Republic, Beijing Municipality consisted of just its urban area and its immediate suburbs. The urban area was divided into many small districts inside what is now the 2nd Ring Road. The Beijing city wall was torn down to make way for the construction of the 2nd Ring Road, which was finished by 1981 in accordance with the 1982 city plan. That road was the first of a series of new ring roads intended for motor vehicles rather than bicycles.

Following the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the urban area of Beijing has expanded greatly. Formerly within the confines of the 2nd and 3rd Ring Roads, the urban area of Beijing is now pushing at the limits of the recently constructed 5th and 6th Ring Roads, with many areas that were formerly farmland now developed residential or commercial districts. According to a 2005 newspaper report, the size of the newly developed Beijing was one and a half times larger than that of old Beijing within the 2nd Ring Road. Wangfujing and Xidan have developed into flourishing shopping districts, while Zhongguancun has become a major centre of electronics in China. In recent years, the expansion of Beijing has also brought to the forefront some problems of urbanization, such as heavy traffic, poor air quality, the loss of historic neighbourhoods, and a significant influx of migrants from various regions of the country, especially rural areas.

On 13 July 2001, the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing as the host for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Geography

Beijing is situated at the northern tip of the roughly triangular North China Plain, which opens to the south and east of the city. Mountains to the north, northwest and west shield the city and northern China's agricultural heartland from the encroaching desert steppes. The northwestern part of the municipality, especially Yanqing County and Huairou District, are dominated by the Jundu Mountains, while the western part is framed by the Xishan Mountains. The Great Wall of China, which stretches across the northern part of Beijing Municipality, made use of this rugged topography to defend against nomadic incursions from the steppes. Mount Dongling in the Xishan ranges and on the border with Hebei is the municipality's highest point, with an altitude of 2303 m.

Major rivers flowing through the municipality include the Yongding River and the Chaobai River, part of the Hai River system, and flow in a southerly direction. Beijing is also the northern terminus of the Grand Canal of China, which was built across the North China Plain to Hangzhou. Miyun Reservoir, built on the upper reaches of the Chaobai River, is Beijing's largest reservoir, and crucial to its water supply. The urban area of Beijing is in the south-central part of the municipality and occupies a small but expanding portion of the municipality's area. It spreads out in bands of concentric ring roads, of which the fifth and outermost, the Sixth Ring Road (the numbering starts at two), passes through several satellite towns. Tian'anmen (the Gate of Heavenly Peace) and Tian'anmen Square are at the centre of Beijing, directly to the south of the Forbidden City, the former residence of the emperors of China. To the west of Tian'anmen is Zhongnanhai, home to the paramount leaders of the People's Republic of China. Running through central Beijing from east to west is Chang'an Avenue, one of the city's main thoroughfares.

Climate

The city has a rather dry, monsoon-influenced humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification ''Dwa''), characterised by hot, humid summers due to the East Asian monsoon, and generally cold, windy, dry winters that reflect the influence of the vast Siberian anticyclone.

Air quality

Joint research between American and Chinese researchers in 2006 concluded that much of the city's pollution comes from surrounding cities and provinces. On average 35–60% of the ozone can be traced to sources outside the city. Shandong Province and Tianjin Municipality have a "significant influence on Beijing's air quality", partly due to the prevailing south/southeasterly flow during the summer and the mountains to the north and northwest.

In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics and to fulfill promises to clean up the city's air, nearly US$17 billion was spent. Beijing also implemented a number of air improvement schemes for the duration of the Games, including stopping work on all construction sites, closing many factories in and around Beijing, closing some gas stations, and cutting motor traffic by half by limiting drivers to odd or even days (based on their license plate numbers) Two new subway lines were opened and thousands of old taxis and buses were replaced to encourage residents to use public transport. The Beijing government encouraged a discussion to keep the odd-even scheme in place after the Olympics, and although the scheme was eventually lifted on 21 September 2008, it was replaced by new restrictions on government vehicles and a new restriction that does not allow the use of a car once a week. In addition, staggered office hours and retail opening times have been encouraged to avoid the rush hour, and parking fees were increased.

Beijing became the first city in China to require the Chinese equivalent to the Euro 4 emission standard. Some 357,000 "yellow label" vehicles – those that have too high emission levels – have been banned from Beijing altogether.

The government regularly uses cloud-seeding measures to increase the likelihood of rain showers in the region to clear the air prior to large events as well as to combat drought conditions in the area.

According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), China has spent $17 billion over the last three years on a large-scale green drive. Beijing has added 3,800 natural gas buses, one of the largest fleets in the world. Twenty percent of the Olympic venues' electricity comes from renewable energy sources. The city has also planted hundreds of thousands of trees and increased green space in an effort to make the city more livable.

One year after the 2008 Olympics, Beijing's officials reported that the city was enjoying the best air quality this decade because of the measures taken during the Games. Nonetheless, Beijing still faces air pollution problems. The US embassy recorded levels of pollution beyond measurable levels on the 21 February 2011, and advised people to stay indoor as a thick smog was covering the city.

Dust storms

Dust from the erosion of deserts in northern and northwestern China results in seasonal dust storms that plague the city; the Beijing Weather Modification Office sometimes artificially induces rainfall to fight such storms and mitigate their effects. In the first four months of 2006 alone, there were no fewer than eight such storms. In April 2002, one dust storm alone dumped nearly 50,000 tons of dust onto the city before moving on to Japan and Korea.

Politics and government

Municipal government is regulated by the local Communist Party of China (CPC), led by the Beijing CPC Secretary (北京市委书记). The local CPC issues administrative orders, collects taxes, manages the economy, and directs a standing committee of the Municipal People's Congress in making policy decisions and overseeing the local government.

Government officials include the mayor and vice-mayor. Numerous bureaus focus on law, public security, and other affairs. Additionally, as the capital of China, Beijing houses all of the important national governmental and political institutions, including the National People's Congress.

Administrative divisions

Subdivisions

Beijing Municipality comprises 16 administrative county-level subdivisions governed directly by the municipality (second-level divisions). Of these, 14 are districts and two are counties. On 1 July 2010, Congwen () and Xuanwu Districts () were merged into Dongcheng and Xicheng Districts respectively. The urban and suburban areas of the city are divided into six districts: Dongcheng District Xicheng District Chaoyang District Haidian District Fengtai District Shijingshan District

The following six districts encompass the more distant suburbs and satellite towns of the metropolitan area: Mentougou District Fangshan District Tongzhou District Shunyi District Changping District Daxing District Huairou District Pinggu District

The remaining two districts and the two counties located further out govern semi-rural and rural areas: Miyun County Yanqing County

Towns

Towns within Beijing Municipality but outside the urban area include (but are not limited to): Changping Huairou Miyun Liangxiang Liulimiao Tongzhou Yizhuang Tiantongyuan Beiyuan Xiaotangshan

Several place names in Beijing end with ''mén'' (), meaning "gate", as they were the locations of gates in the former Beijing city wall. Other place names end in ''cūn'' (), meaning "village", as they were originally villages outside the city wall.

Beijing's 18 districts and counties are further subdivided into 273 lower third-level administrative units at the township level: 119 towns, 24 townships, 5 ethnic townships and 125 subdistricts.

Neighbourhoods

Neighbourhoods may extend across multiple districts. Major neighbourhoods in urban Beijing include:

Qianmen Tian'anmen Di'anmen Chongwenmen Xuanwumen Fuchengmen Xizhimen Deshengmen Andingmen Sanlitun Dongzhimen Chaoyangmen Yongdingmen Zuo'anmen You'anmen Guangqumen Guang'anmen Dongbianmen Xibianmen Hepingmen Fuxingmen Jianguomen Gongzhufen Fangzhuang Guomao Hepingli Ping'anli Beixinqiao Jiaodaokou Kuanjie Wangjing Wangfujing Dengshikou Wudaokou Xidan Dongdan Zhongguancun Panjiayuan Beijing CBD Yayuncun

Economy

Beijing is amongst the most developed cities in China, with tertiary industry accounting for 73.2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP); it was the first post industrial city in mainland China. Beijing is home to 26 Fortune Global 500 companies, the third most in the world behind Tokyo and Paris.

Finance is one of the most important industries. By the end of 2007, there were 751 financial organizations in Beijing generating revenue of 128.6 billion RMB, 11.6% of the total financial industry revenue of the entire country. That also accounts for 13.8% of Beijing's GDP, the highest percentage of any Chinese city.

In 2010, Beijing's nominal GDP reached 1.37 trillion RMB. Its per capita GDP was 78,194 RMB. In 2009, Beijing's nominal GDP was 1.19 trillion RMB (US$174 billion), a growth of 10.1% over the previous year. Its GDP per capita was 68,788 RMB (US$10,070), an increase of 6.2% over 2008. In 2009, Beijing's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were worth 11.83 billion RMB, 274.31 billion RMB, and 900.45 billion RMB respectively. Urban disposable income per capita was 26,738 yuan, a real increase of 8.1% from the previous year. Per capita pure income of rural residents was 11,986 RMB, a real increase of 11.5%. The Engel's coefficient of Beijing's urban residents reached 31.8% in 2005, while that of the rural residents was 32.8%, declining 4.5 and 3.9 percentage points respectively compared to 2000.

Beijing's real estate and automobile sectors have continued to boom in recent years. In 2005, a total of of housing real estate was sold, for a total of 175.88 billion RMB. The total number of cars registered in Beijing in 2004 was 2,146,000, of which 1,540,000 were privately owned (a yearly increase of 18.7%).

The Beijing central business district (CBD), centred on the Guomao area, has been identified as the city's new central business district, and is home to a variety of corporate regional headquarters, shopping precincts, and high-end housing. Beijing Financial Street, in the Fuxingmen and Fuchengmen area, is a traditional financial centre. The Wangfujing and Xidan areas are major shopping districts. Zhongguancun, dubbed "China's Silicon Valley", continues to be a major centre in electronics and computer-related industries, as well as pharmaceuticals-related research. Meanwhile, Yizhuang, located to the southeast of the urban area, is becoming a new centre in pharmaceuticals, information technology, and materials engineering. Shijingshan, on the western outskirts of the city, is among the major industrial areas. Specially designated industrial parks include Zhongguancun Science Park, Yongle Economic Development Zone, Beijing Economic-technological Development Area, and Tianzhu Airport Industrial Zone.

Agriculture is carried on outside the urban area, with wheat and maize (corn) being the main crops.

The development of Beijing continues at a rapid pace, and the vast expansion has created a multitude of problems for the city. Beijing is known for its smog as well as the frequent "power-saving" programmes instituted by the government. To reduce air pollution, a number of major industries have been ordered to reduce emissions or leave the city. Beijing Capital Steel, once one of the city's largest employers and its single biggest polluter, has been relocating most of its operations to Tangshan, in nearby Hebei Province. Residents and tourists alike frequently complain about the water quality and the cost of the basic services such as electricity and natural gas.

Demographics

The registered population of Beijing Municipality consists of people holding either Beijing permanent residence ''hukou permits'' or temporary residence permits. The 2010 census revealed that the total population in Beijing had reached 19.6 million. In 2006, the population of the urban core was 13.33 million, 84.3 percent of the total municipal population, which officially stood at 15.81 million. Urban sprawl continues at a rapid pace.

After Chongqing and Shanghai, Beijing is the third largest of the four directly controlled municipalities of the People's Republic of China. In the PRC, a directly controlled municipality (直辖市 in pinyin: zhíxiáshì) is a city with status equal to a province.

According to the statistical yearbook issued in 2005 by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, out of a total population in 2004 of 14.213 million in Beijing, 1.415 million (9.96%) were 0–14 years old, 11.217 million (78.92%) were 15–64 and 1.581 million (11.12%) 65 and over.

Most of Beijing's residents belong to the Han Chinese majority. Ethnic minorities include the Manchu, Hui, and Mongol. A Tibetan-language high school exists for youth of Tibetan ancestry, nearly all of whom have come to Beijing from Tibet expressly for their studies. A sizable international community resides in Beijing, many attracted by the highly growing foreign business and trade sector, others by the traditional and modern culture of the city. Many of these foreigners live in the areas around the Beijing CBD, Sanlitun, and Wudaokou. In recent years, there has been an influx of South Koreans, an estimated 200,000 in 2009, predominantly for business and study. Many of them live in the Wangjing and Wudaokou areas.

style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"	Ethnic groups in Beijing, 2000 census(excluding members of the People's Liberation Army in active service)
Nationalities of China>Ethnicity !! Population !! Percentage
Han Chinese	Han	12,983,696	95.69%
Manchu	250,286
Hui people	Hui	235,837
Ethnic Mongols in China	Mongols	37,464
Koreans in China	Koreans	20,369
Tujia people	Tujia	8372
Zhuang people	Zhuang	7322
Miao people	Miao	5291
Uyghur people	Uyghur	3129
Tibetan people	Tibetan	2920

Culture

People native to urban Beijing speak the Beijing dialect, which belongs to the Mandarin subdivision of spoken Chinese. This speech is the basis for ''putonghua'', the standard spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Rural areas of Beijing Municipality have their own dialects akin to those of Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing Municipality.

Beijing or Peking opera (''Jīngjù'', 京剧), is a traditional form of Chinese theatre well known throughout the nation. Commonly lauded as one of the highest achievements of Chinese culture, Beijing opera is performed through a combination of song, spoken dialogue, and codified action sequences involving gestures, movement, fighting and acrobatics. Much of Beijing opera is carried out in an archaic stage dialect quite different from Modern Standard Chinese and from the modern Beijing dialect.

Beijing cuisine is the local style of cooking. Peking Roast Duck is perhaps the best known dish. Fuling Jiabing, a traditional Beijing snack food, is a pancake (''bing'') resembling a flat disk with a filling made from ''fu ling'', a fungus used in traditional Chinese medicine. Teahouses are common in Beijing.

The cloisonné (or ''Jingtailan'', literally "Blue of Jingtai") metalworking technique and tradition is a Beijing art specialty, and is one of the most revered traditional crafts in China. Cloisonné making requires elaborate and complicated processes which include base-hammering, copper-strip inlay, soldering, enamel-filling, enamel-firing, surface polishing and gilding. Beijing's lacquerware is also well known for its sophisticated and intrinsic patterns and images carved into its surface, and the various decoration techniques of lacquer include "carved lacquer" and "engraved gold".

Younger residents of Beijing have become more attracted to the nightlife, which has flourished in recent decades, breaking prior cultural traditions that had practically restricted it to the upper class.

Places of interest

At the historical heart of Beijing lies the Forbidden City, the enormous palace compound that was the home of the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties; the Forbidden City hosts the Palace Museum, which contains imperial collections of Chinese art. Surrounding the Forbidden City are several former imperial gardens, parks and scenic areas, notably Beihai, Shichahai, Zhongnanhai, Jingshan and Zhongshan. These places, particularly Beihai Park, are described as masterpieces of Chinese gardening art, and are popular tourist destinations with tremendous historical importance; in the modern era, Zhongnanhai has also been the political heart of various Chinese governments and regimes and is now the headquarters of the Communist Party of China. From Tiananmen Square, right across from the Forbidden City, there are several notable sites, such as the Tiananmen, Qianmen, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, the Monument to the People's Heroes, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. The Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace both lie at the western part of the city; the former, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains a comprehensive collection of imperial gardens and palaces that served as the summer retreat for the Qing emperors.

Among the best known religious sites in the city is the Temple of Heaven (''Tiantan''), located in southeastern Beijing, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties made visits for annual ceremonies of prayers to Heaven for good harvest. In the north of the city is the Temple of Earth (''Ditan''), while the Temple of the Sun (''Ritan'') and the Temple of the Moon (''Yuetan'') lie in the eastern and western urban areas respectively. Other well-known temple sites include the Dongyue Temple, Tanzhe Temple, Miaoying Temple, White Cloud Temple, Yonghe Temple, Fayuan Temple, Wanshou Temple and Big Bell Temple. The city also has its own Confucius Temple, and a Guozijian or Imperial Academy. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, built in 1605, is the oldest Catholic church in Beijing. The Niujie Mosque is the oldest mosque in Beijing, with a history stretching back over a thousand years.

Beijing contains several well-preserved pagodas and stone pagodas, such as the towering Pagoda of Tianning Temple, which was built during the Liao Dynasty from 1100–1120, and the Pagoda of Cishou Temple, which was built in 1576 during the Ming Dynasty. Historically noteworthy stone bridges include the 12th century Lugou Bridge, the 17th century Baliqiao bridge, and the 18th century Jade Belt Bridge. The Beijing Ancient Observatory displays pre-telescopic spheres dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Fragrant Hills (''Xiangshan'') is a popular scenic public park that consists of natural landscaped areas as well as traditional and cultural relics. The Beijing Botanical Garden exhibits over 6,000 species of plants, including a variety of trees, bushes and flowers, and an extensive peony garden. The Taoranting, Longtan, Chaoyang, Haidian, Milu Yuan and Zizhu Yuan parks are some of the notable recreational parks in the city. The Beijing Zoo is a center of zoological research that also contains rare animals from various continents, including the Chinese giant panda.

There are over one hundred museums in Beijing. In addition to the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City and the National Museum of China, other major museums include the National Art Museum of China, the Capital Museum, the Beijing Art Museum, the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, the Geological Museum of China, the Beijing Museum of Natural History and the Paleozoological Museum of China.

Located at the outskirts of urban Beijing, but within its municipality are the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty, the lavish and elaborate burial sites of thirteen Ming emperors, which have been designated as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The archaeological Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian is another World Heritage Site within the municipality, containing a wealth of discoveries, among them one of the first specimens of ''Homo erectus'' and an assemblage of bones of the gigantic hyena ''Pachycrocuta brevirostris''. There are several sections of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Great Wall of China, most notably Badaling, Jinshanling, Simatai and Mutianyu.

Architecture

Three styles of architecture predominate in urban Beijing. First, there is the traditional architecture of imperial China, perhaps best exemplified by the massive Tian'anmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace), which remains the People's Republic of China's trademark edifice, the Forbidden City, the Imperial Ancestral Temple and the Temple of Heaven. Next, there is what is sometimes referred to as the "Sino-Sov" style, with structures tending to be boxy and sometimes poorly constructed, which were built between the 1950s and the 1970s. Finally, there are much more modern architectural forms, most noticeably in the area of the Beijing CBD and Beijing Financial Street.

In the early 21st century, Beijing has witnessed tremendous growth of new building constructions, exhibiting various modern styles from international designers. A mixture of both old and new styles of architecture can be seen at the 798 Art Zone, which mixes 1950s design with the new.

Beijing is famous for its ''siheyuans'', a type of residence where a common courtyard is shared by the surrounding buildings. Among the more grand examples are the Prince Gong Mansion and Residence of Soong Ching-ling. These courtyards are usually connected by alleys called ''hutongs''. The ''hutongs'' are generally straight and run east to west so that doorways face north and south for good Feng Shui. They vary in width; some are so narrow only a few pedestrians can pass through at a time. Once ubiquitous in Beijing, ''siheyuans'' and ''hutongs'' are rapidly disappearing, as entire city blocks of ''hutongs'' are replaced by high-rise buildings. Residents of the ''hutongs'' are entitled to live in the new buildings in apartments of at least the same size as their former residences. Many complain, however, that the traditional sense of community and street life of the ''hutongs'' cannot be replaced, and these properties are often government owned.

Media

Television and radio

Beijing Television broadcasts on channels 1 through 10. Three radio stations feature programmes in English: ''Hit FM'' on FM 88.7, ''Easy FM'' by China Radio International on FM 91.5, and the newly launched ''Radio 774'' on AM 774. Beijing Radio Stations is the family of radio stations serving the city.

Press

The well-known ''Beijing Evening News'' (''Beijing Wanbao'', 北京晚报), covering news about Beijing in Chinese, is distributed every afternoon. Other newspapers include ''The Beijing News'' (''Xin Jing Bao'', 新京报), the ''Beijing Star Daily'', the ''Beijing Morning News'', and the ''Beijing Youth Daily'' (''Beijing Qingnian Bao''), as well as English-language weeklies ''Beijing Weekend'' and ''Beijing Today'' (the English-language edition of ''Youth Daily''). The ''People's Daily'' and the ''China Daily'' (English) are published in Beijing as well.

Publications primarily aimed at international visitors and the expatriate community include the English-language periodicals ''Time Out Beijing'', ''City Weekend'', ''Beijing This Month'', ''Beijing Talk'', ''That's Beijing''.

Sports

Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer Paralympics. City officials relocated 350,000 people for the construction of the Beijing National Stadium, which was completed on 28 June 2008. Professional sports teams based in Beijing include:

Chinese Super League

* Beijing Guoan

Chinese Football Association Jia League

* Beijing Baxy

* Beijing Institute of Technology FC

Chinese Basketball Association

* Beijing Ducks

Women's Chinese Basketball Association

* Beijing Shougang

Asia League Ice Hockey

* China Sharks

China Baseball League

* Beijing Tigers

The Beijing Olympians of the American Basketball Association, formerly a Chinese Basketball Association team, kept their name and maintained a roster of primarily Chinese players after moving to Maywood, California in 2005.

Transportation

With the growth of the city in the wake of economic reforms, Beijing has evolved as the most important transport hub in the People's Republic of China, and within the larger East Asian region. Encircling the city are five ring roads, nine expressways and city express routes, eleven China National Highways, several railway routes, and an international airport.

Rail & High-speed rail

Beijing is one of the largest hubs in China's railway network. Eight conventional rail lines radiate from Beijing to Shanghai (Jinghu Line), Guangzhou (Jingguang Line), Kowloon (Jingjiu Line), Harbin (Jingha Line), Baotou (Jingbao Line), Qinhuangdao (Jingqin Line), Chengde (Jingcheng Line) and Yuanping, Shanxi (Jingyuan Line). In addition, Beijing has two high-speed rail lines: the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which opened in 2011, and the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, which opened in 2008.

The city's main railway stations are the Beijing Railway Station, which opened in 1959; the Beijing West Railway Station, which opened in 1996; and the Beijing South Railway Station, which was rebuilt into the city's high-speed railway station in 2008. As of 1 July 2010, Beijing Railway Station had 173 trains arriving daily, Beijing West had 232 trains and Beijing South had 163. The Beijing North Railway Station, first built in 1909 and expanded in 2009, had 22 trains.

Smaller stations in the city including Beijing East Railway Station and Qinghuayuan Railway Station which handle mainly commuter passenger traffic. The Fengtai Railway Station has been closed for renovation. In outlying suburbs and counties of Beijing, there are over 40 railway stations.

From Beijing, direct Direct passenger train service is available to most large cities in China. International train service is available to Mongolia, Russia, Vietnam and North Korea. Passenger trains in China are numbered according to their direction in relation to Beijing.

Roads and expressways

:''See Expressways of Beijing and China National Highways of Beijing for more related information.''

Beijing is connected by road links to all parts of China as part of the National Trunk Road Network. Nine expressways of China serve Beijing, as do eleven China National Highways. Beijing's urban transport is dependent upon the five "ring roads" that concentrically surround the city, with the Forbidden City area marked as the geographical center for the ring roads. The ring roads appear more rectangular than ring-shaped. There is no official "1st Ring Road". The 2nd Ring Road is located in the inner city. Ring roads tend to resemble expressways progressively as they extend outwards, with the 5th and 6th Ring Roads being full-standard national expressways, linked to other roads only by interchanges. Expressways to other regions of China are generally accessible from the 3rd Ring Road outward.

Within the urban core, city streets generally follow the checkerboard pattern of the ancient capital. Many of Beijing's boulevards and streets with "inner" and "outer" are still named in relation to gates in the city wall, though most gates no longer stand. Traffic jams are a major concern. Even outside of rush hour, several roads still remain clogged with traffic.

Exacerbating Beijing's traffic problems is its relatively underdeveloped mass transit system. Beijing's urban design layout further exacerbates transportation problems. The authorities have introduced several bus lanes, which only public buses can use during rush hour. In the beginning of 2010, Beijing had 4 million registered automobiles. By the end of 2010, the government forecast 5 million. In 2010, new car registrations in Beijing averaged 15,500 per week.

Towards the end of 2010, the city government announced a series of drastic measures to tackle traffic jams, including limiting the number of new license plates issued to passenger cars to 20,000 a month and barring cars with non-Beijing plates from entering areas within the Fifth Ring Road during rush hour.

Air

Beijing's primary airport is the Beijing Capital International Airport (IATA: PEK; near Shunyi), which is about northeast of the city centre. It is currently the second busiest airport in the world (after Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport) and the busiest in Asia. After renovations for the 2008 Olympics, the airport now boasts three terminals, with Terminal 3 being one of the largest in the world. Most domestic and nearly all international flights arrive at and depart from Capital Airport. it is the main hub for Air China and a hub for China Southern and Hainan Airlines. The airport links Beijing with almost every other Chinese city with regular air passenger service.

The Airport Expressway links the airport to central Beijing; it is a roughly 40-minute drive from the city centre during good traffic conditions. Prior to the 2008 Olympics, the 2nd Airport Expressway was built to the airport, as well as a light rail system, which now connects to the Beijing Subway.

Other airports in the city include Liangxiang, Nanyuan, Xijiao, Shahe and Badaling. These airports are primarily for military use and less well-known to the public. Nanyuan serves as the hub for only one passenger airline. A second international airport is currently being built in Daxing District, and is expected to be open by 2017.

Public transit

The Beijing Subway opened in 1971, and had only two lines until Line 13 began operating in 2002. Since then, the subway has expanded to fourteen lines. Line 1 and the Batong Line, its eastern extension, cross almost all of urban Beijing from east to west. Lines 4 and 5 serve as two north-south lines. The fare is a flat 2 yuan, with unlimited transfers except for the Airport Express line, which costs 25 yuan per trip. There are nearly 700 bus and trolleybus routes, including three bus rapid transit routes. All public transport can be accessed with the ''Yikatong'' card, which uses radio frequencies scanned at subway stations and on public transit buses.

In May 2010, Beijing's municipal government announced plans to add 21 subway lines by 2020. The plan calls for 30 subway lines and 450 stations in Beijing, reaching in length. When implemented, residents within the region encompassed by the Fourth Ring Road will be able walk to a station in 10 to 15 minutes. The suburbs will be connected by new radial lines.

Registered taxis can be found throughout Beijing, as well as a large number of unregistered ones. As of 30 June 2008, all fares on legal taxis start at 10 Renminbi for the first and 2.00 Renminbi per additional kilometer (0.6 mile), not counting idling fees. Most taxis are Hyundai Elantras, Hyundai Sonatas, Peugeots, Citroëns and Volkswagen Jettas. After , the base fare increases by 50% (but is only applied to the portion ''over'' that distance). Between 11 pm and 5 am, there is also a 20% fee increase, starting at 11 RMB and increasing at a rate of 2.4 RMB per km. Rides over 15 km and between 11 pm and 6 am incur both charges, for a total increase of 80%.

Bicycles

Beijing has long been well known for the number of bicycles on its streets. Although the rise of motor traffic has created a great deal of congestion and bicycle use has declined, bicycles are still an important form of local transportation. Large numbers of cyclists can be seen on most roads in the city, and most of the main roads have dedicated bicycle lanes. Beijing is relatively flat, which makes cycling convenient. The rise of electric bicycles and electric scooters, which have similar speeds and use the same cycle lanes, may have brought about a revival in bicycle-speed two-wheeled transport. It is possible to cycle to most parts of the city and, compared to many western cities, conditions are relatively safe. Because of the growing traffic congestion, the authorities have indicated more than once that they wish to encourage cycling, but it is not clear whether there is sufficient will to translate that into action on a significant scale.

Education

Beijing is home to a great number of colleges and universities, including several well-regarded universities of international stature, including Peking University and Tsinghua University (two of the National Key Universities). Owing to Beijing's status as the political and cultural capital of China, a larger proportion of tertiary-level institutions are concentrated here than in any other city in China (at least 70). Many international students from Japan, Korea, North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere come to Beijing to study every year, some through third party study abroad providers such as IES Abroad and others as part of an exchange program with their home universities. The schools are administered by China's Ministry of Education.

International relations

Twin towns and sister cities

Beijing has numerous twin towns and sister cities around the world, many of them the capitals of their respective countries:

* Tokyo, Japan (1979)

* Belgrade, Serbia (1980)

* New York, United States (1980)

* Lima, Peru (1983)

* Washington D.C., United States (1984)

* Madrid, Spain (1985)

* Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1986)

Île-de-France (region)>Île-de-France, France (1987)

* Köln, Germany (1987)

* Algiers, Algeria (1989)

* Amman, Jordan (1990)

* Ankara, Turkey (1990)

* Cairo, Egypt (1990)

* Jakarta, Indonesia (1992)

* Riga, Latvia

* São Paulo, Brazil

Islamabad, Pakistan (1993)

* Bangkok, Thailand (1993)

* Buenos Aires, Argentina (1993)

* Kiev, Ukraine (1993)

* Seoul, South Korea (1993)

* Amsterdam, Netherlands (1994)

* Berlin, Germany (1994)

* Brussels, Belgium (1994)

* Hanoi, Vietnam (1994)

* Moscow, Russia (1995)

* Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria), South Africa (1998)

* Ottawa, Canada (1999)

* Canberra, Australia (2000)

* Athens, Greece (2005)

* Bucharest, Romania (2005)

* Budapest, Hungary (2005)

* Havana, Cuba (2005)

* Manila, Philippines (2005)

* Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2006)

* Astana, Kazakhstan (2006)

* Helsinki, Finland (2006)

* London, United Kingdom (2006)

* Tel Aviv, Israel (2006)

* Wellington, New Zealand (2006)

* Lisbon, Portugal (2007)

* Tirana, Albania (2007)

* Doha, Qatar (2008)

Santiago de Chile>Santiago, Chile (2008)

* San José, Costa Rica (2009)

* Caracas, Venezuela (2010)

* Dublin, Ireland (2011)

Partner cities

Beijing has two partner cities, both in Europe:

	* Paris, France (1997)	* Rome, Italy (1998)

See also

Large Cities Climate Leadership Group

List of hospitals in Beijing

List of mayors of Beijing

Tourist attractions of Beijing

2045 Peking – the name of an asteroid

Notes and references

Further reading

Cammelli, Stefano ''Storia di Pechino e di come divenne capitale della Cina'', Bologna, Il Mulino, 2004. ISBN 9788815099105

Harper, Damian, ''Beijing: City Guide'', 7th Edition, Oakland, California: Lonely Planet Publications, 2007.

Harper, Damian, ''Beijing: City Guide'', 6th Edition, Oakland, California : Lonely Planet Publications, 2005. ISBN 1740597826.

External links

Beijing Government website and

Economic profile for Beijing at HKTDC

{{s-ttl|title=Capital of China (as Dadu) |years=1264–1368|row=1}} {{s-ttl|title=Capital of China |years=1420–1928|row=2}} {{s-ttl|title=Capital of the People's Republic of China |years=1949–present|row=3}}

Lat. and Long. }} }}

Category:Capitals in Asia Category:Host cities of the Summer Olympic Games Category:Independent cities Category:Metropolitan areas of China Category:Municipalities of the People's Republic of China Category:North China Plain Category:Articles including recorded pronunciations Category:IOC Session Host Cities

ace:Beijing af:Beijing am:ቤዪጂንግ ang:Beȝcinȝ ar:بكين an:Pequín roa-rup:Beijing frp:Pèquin ast:Beixín ay:Pekin' az:Pekin bn:বেইজিং bjn:Péycing zh-min-nan:Pak-kiaⁿ-chhī be:Горад Пекін be-x-old:Пэкін bcl:Beijing bar:Peking bo:པེ་ཅིང་གྲོང་ཁྱེར། bs:Peking br:Beijing bg:Пекин ca:Pequín cv:Пекин ceb:Beijing cs:Peking cbk-zam:Pekín cy:Beijing da:Beijing pdc:Beijing de:Peking dv:ބީޖިންގ et:Peking el:Πεκίνο es:Pekín eo:Pekino ext:Pequín eu:Pekin fa:پکن hif:Beijing fo:Beijing fr:Pékin fy:Peking ga:Béising gv:Beijing gd:Beijing gl:Pequín - 北京 gan:北京 gu:બેઇજિંગ hak:Pet-kîn xal:Бәәҗң балһсн ko:베이징 시 haw:Beijing hy:Պեկին hi:बीजिंग hsb:Peking hr:Peking io:Beijing bpy:বেইজিং id:Beijing ia:Beijing os:Пекин is:Beijing it:Pechino he:בייג'ינג jv:Beijing kl:Beijing kn:ಬೀಜಿಂಗ್ pam:Beijing ka:პეკინი kk:Бейжің kw:Beijing sw:Beijing kv:Пекин ht:Peken ku:Beijing la:Pechinum lv:Pekina lb:Peking lt:Pekinas lij:Pechin jbo:beidjin lmo:Pechin hu:Peking mk:Пекинг mg:Beijing ml:ബെയ്‌ജിങ്ങ്‌ mi:Beijing mr:बीजिंग arz:بيكين mzn:پکن ms:Beijing cdo:Báe̤k-gĭng mn:Бээжин my:ပေကျင်းမြို့ nah:Pequin na:Beijing nl:Peking ne:बेइजिङ ja:北京市 no:Beijing nn:Beijing nrm:Péqùin nov:Beyjing oc:Pequin mhr:Пекин uz:Pekin pa:ਬੀਜਿੰਗ pnb:بیجنگ pap:Bejing ps:بېجینګ pms:Pechin tpi:Beijing pl:Pekin pt:Pequim crh:Pekin ro:Beijing qu:Pikkin rue:Пекінґ ru:Пекин sah:Пекин se:Peking sc:Beijing sco:Beijing sq:Pekini scn:Pechinu si:බෙයිජිං simple:Beijing sk:Peking sl:Peking szl:Bejdżing so:Beijing ckb:پێکەن srn:Beijing sr:Пекинг sh:Peking su:Beijing fi:Peking sv:Peking tl:Beijing ta:பெய்ஜிங் kab:Pekin roa-tara:Pechine tt:Пекин te:బీజింగ్ th:ปักกิ่ง tg:Пекин tr:Pekin tk:Pekin uk:Пекін ur:بیجنگ ug:بېيجىڭ شەھىرى za:Baekging vi:Bắc Kinh fiu-vro:Peking zh-classical:北京市 war:Beijing wuu:北京 yi:בייזשינג yo:Beijing zh-yue:北京 bat-smg:Pekėns zh:北京市

Name	Joan Baez
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Joan Chandos Báez
Birth date	January 09, 1941
Origin	Staten Island, New York City, New YorkUnited States
Occupation	Musician, Songwriter, Activist
Instrument	vocals, guitar, piano, ukulele
Genre	folk, folk rock, country
Years active	1958–present
Label	Vanguard (1960–1971) A&M (1972–1977) Portrait/CBS (1977–1981) Gold Castle (1987–1991) Virgin (1991–1993) Guardian (1995–2002) Koch (2003–present)
Associated acts	Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Judy Collins, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Mimi Fariña, the Grateful Dead, Janis Ian, the Indigo Girls, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Rocker T, Dar Williams
Website	joanbaez.com }}

Joan Chandos Baez () (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and activist.

Baez has a distinctive vocal style, with a strong vibrato. Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.

Baez began her career performing in coffeehouses in Boston and Cambridge, and rose to fame as an unbilled performer at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. She began her recording career in 1960, and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, ''Joan Baez'', ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'', and ''Joan Baez in Concert'' all achieved gold record status, and stayed on the charts for two years.

Baez has had a popular hit song with "Diamonds & Rust" and hit covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Other songs associated with Baez include "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". She performed three of the songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, helped to bring the songs of Bob Dylan to national prominence, and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment.

Baez has performed publicly for over 53 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish as well as in English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. She is regarded as a folk singer, although her music has diversified since the 1960s, encompassing everything from folk rock and pop to country and gospel music. Although a songwriter herself, Baez is generally regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, having recorded songs by The Allman Brothers Band, The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Mercedes Sosa, Woody Guthrie, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and many others. In recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of modern songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant.

Early life

Baez was born on Staten Island, New York. Her father, Albert Baez, was born in 1912 in Puebla, Mexico, and died March 20, 2007. His father, Joan's grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left Catholicism to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when Albert was two years old. Albert grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to—and advocated for—a Spanish-speaking congregation. Her father first considered becoming a minister but instead he turned to the study of mathematics and physics, where he later became the co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and author of one of the most widely used physics textbooks in the U.S. The Baez family converted to Quakerism during Joan's early childhood, and she has continued to identify with the tradition, particularly in her commitment to pacifism and social issues.

Her mother, Joan Bridge Baez, referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan", was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second daughter of an English Episcopal priest. Joan Senior and Albert met at a high-school dance in Madison, New Jersey, and quickly fell in love. After their marriage, the newlyweds moved to California.

Baez had two sisters — the elder, Pauline, and the younger, Mimi Fariña. Mimi died of cancer in California in 2001.

Because of her father's work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq, where they were in 1951. Joan became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series ''American Masters, ''is the true core of [her] life, looming larger than music.''''

Music career

Early years

A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction. When she was 8, at her aunt's behest, Baez attended a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California, for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California, congregation. In 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.

College music scene in Massachusetts

In 1958, her father accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to Belmont, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. At that time, it was within the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began busking near home in Boston and nearby Cambridge. She also performed in clubs, and attended Boston University for about six weeks. In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge, she gave her first concert. When designing the poster for the performance, Baez considered changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl, the surname of her long-time mentor, Ira Sandperl or Maria from the song "They Call the Wind Maria". She later opted against it, fearing that people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Spanish. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, and a small group of friends to a total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $25 per show.

A few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets, a family friend designed the album cover, and it was released on Veritas Records that same year as ''Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square''. Baez later met Bob Gibson and Odetta, who was at the time one of the most prominent vocalists singing folk and gospel music. Baez cites Odetta as a primary influence along with Marian Anderson and Seeger. Gibson invited Baez to perform with him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two sang two duets, "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River". The performance generated substantial praise for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice, and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following year although Columbia Records tried to sign her first. Baez later claimed that she felt she would be given more artistic license at a more "low key" label.

First albums and 1960s breakthrough

Her true professional career began at that 1959 Newport Folk Festival; following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, ''Joan Baez'' (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. It featured many popular Child Ballads of the day, such as "Mary Hamilton" and was recorded in only four days in the ballroom of New York City's Manhattan Towers Hotel. The album also included "El Preso Numero Nueve", a song sung entirely in Spanish. That same song later appeared on her Spanish-language album, ''Gracias a la Vida'' (1974).

Her second release, ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'' (1961) went "gold", as did ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1'' (1962) and ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2'' (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'' contained strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1'' and its second counterpart, were unique in that, unlike most live albums, they contained only new songs, rather than established favorites. It was ''Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2'' that featured Baez's first-ever Dylan cover. From the early to mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.

Though primarily an albums artist, several of Baez' singles have charted and the first being her 1965 cover of Phil Ochs' "There but for Fortune", which became a mid-level chart hit in the U.S. and a top-ten single in the United Kingdom. Baez added other instruments to her recordings on ''Farewell, Angelina'' (1965), which features several Dylan songs interspersed with more traditional fare. Deciding to experiment after having exhausted the folksinger-with-guitar format, Baez turned to Peter Schickele, a classical music composer, who provided classical orchestration for her next three albums: ''Noël'' (1966), ''Joan'' (1967) and ''Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time'' (1968). ''Noël'' was a Christmas album of traditional material, while ''Baptism'' was akin to a concept album, featuring Baez reading and singing poems written by celebrated poets such as James Joyce, Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman.

In 1968, Baez traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where a marathon recording session resulted in two albums. The first, ''Any Day Now'' (1968), consists exclusively of Dylan covers. The other, the country-music-infused ''David's Album'' (1969) was recorded for husband David Harris, a prominent anti-Vietnam War protester eventually imprisoned for draft resistance. Harris, a country-music fan, turned Baez toward more complex country-rock influences beginning with ''David's Album''. Later in 1968, she published her first memoir, ''Daybreak'' (by Dial Press). In 1969, her appearance at Woodstock in upstate New York afforded her an international musical and political podium, particularly upon the successful release of the documentary film ''Woodstock'' (1970). Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David" which was written for her husband after he was imprisoned for draft evasion.

1970s and the end of Vanguard years

After eleven years with Vanguard, Baez decided in 1971 to cut ties with the label that had released her albums since 1960. She delivered them one last success with the gold-selling album ''Blessed Are...'' (1971) which spawned a top-ten hit in Robbie Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", her cover of The Band's signature song. With ''Come from the Shadows'' (1972), Baez switched to A&M Records, where she remained for four years and six albums.

Joan Baez wrote and performed a song titled "The Story of Bangladesh" at the Concert for Bangladesh, Madison Square Garden in 1971.

During this period, in late 1971, she reunited with Schickele to record two tracks, "Rejoice in the Sun" and "Silent Running" for the science-fiction film, ''Silent Running''. The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, another LP was released on Decca (DL 7-9188), and was later reissued by Varese Sarabande on black (STV-81072) and green (VC-81072) vinyl. In 1998 a limited release on CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" was released.

''Where Are You Now, My Son?'' (1973) featured a 23-minute title song which took up all of the B-side of the album. Half spoken word poem and half tape-recorded sounds, the song documented Baez's visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in December 1972, during which she and her traveling companions survived the 11-day long Christmas Bombings campaign over Hanoi and Haiphong. ''(See Vietnam War in Civil rights section below.)''

''Gracias a la Vida'' (1974) (the title song written and first performed by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra) followed and was a success in both the U.S. and Latin America. It included the song "Cucurrucucú paloma". Flirting with mainstream pop music as well as writing her own songs for ''Diamonds & Rust'' (1975), the album became the highest selling of Baez's career and spawned a second top-ten single in the form of the title track.

After ''Gulf Winds'' (1976), an album of entirely self-composed songs, and ''From Every Stage'' (1976), a live album that had Baez performing songs "from every stage" of her career, Baez again parted ways with a record label when she moved to CBS Records for ''Blowin' Away'' (1977) and ''Honest Lullaby'' (1979).

1980s and 1990s

In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the "universality of her music". In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' in the Wind", a song she first performed twenty years earlier.

Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 ''A Conspiracy of Hope'' tour and a guest spot on their subsequent ''Human Rights Now!'' tour.

Baez found herself without an American label for the release of ''Live Europe 83'' (1984), which was released in Europe and Canada, but not released commercially in the U.S. She did not have an American release until the album ''Recently'' (1987) on Gold Castle Records.

In 1987, Baez's second autobiography called ''And a Voice to Sing With'' was published and became a ''New York Times'' bestseller. That same year, she traveled to the Middle East to visit with and sing songs of peace for the people of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.

In May 1989, Baez performed at a music festival in communist Czechoslovakia, called Bratislavská lýra. While there, she met future Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel, whom she let carry her guitar so as to prevent his arrest by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing ''a cappella'' for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel cited her as a great inspiration and influence in that country's Velvet Revolution, the revolution in which the Soviet-dominated communist government there was overthrown.

Baez recorded two more albums with Gold Castle, ''Speaking of Dreams'', (1989) and ''Brothers in Arms'' (1991). She then landed a contract with a major label, Virgin Records, recording ''Play Me Backwards'' (1992) for Virgin shortly before the company was purchased by EMI. She then switched to Guardian, with whom she produced a live album, ''Ring Them Bells'' (1995), and a studio album, ''Gone from Danger'' (1997).

In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of then-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.

In October of that year, Baez became the first major artist to perform in a professional concert presentation on Alcatraz Island (a former U.S. federal prison) in San Francisco, California, in a benefit for her sister Mimi's Bread and Roses organization. She later returned for another concert in 1996.

2000 to present

Beginning in 2001, Baez has had several successful long-term engagements as a lead character at San Francisco's Teatro ZinZanni. In August 2001, Vanguard began re-releasing Baez's first 13 albums, which she recorded for the label between 1960 and 1971. The reissues, being released through Vanguard's Original Master Series, feature digitally restored sound, unreleased bonus songs, new and original artwork, and new liner-note essays written by Arthur Levy. Likewise, her six A&M albums were reissued in 2003. In 2003, Baez was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers. Her album, ''Dark Chords on a Big Guitar'' (2003), features songs by composers half her age, while a November 2004 performance at New York City's Bowery Ballroom was recorded for a live release, ''Bowery Songs'' (2005).

On October 1, 2005, she performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Then, on January 13, 2006, Baez performed at the funeral of Lou Rawls, where she led Jesse Jackson, Sr., Wonder, and others in the singing of "Amazing Grace". On June 6, 2006, Baez joined Bruce Springsteen on stage at his San Francisco concert, where the two performed the rolling anthem "Pay Me My Money Down". In September 2006, Baez contributed a live, retooled version of her classic song "Sweet Sir Galahad" to a Starbucks's exclusive XM Artist Confidential album. In the new version, she changed the lyric "here's to the dawn of their days" to "here's to the dawn of ''her'' days", as a tribute to her late sister Mimi, about whom Baez wrote the song in 1969. Later on, October 8, 2006, she appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Her performance was kept secret from former Czech Republic President Havel until the moment she appeared on stage. Havel remains a great admirer of both Baez and her work. During Baez's next visit to Prague, in April 2007, the two met again when she performed in front of a sold-out house at Prague's Lucerna Hall, a building erected by Havel's grandfather. On December 2, 2006, she made a guest appearance at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir's Christmas Concert at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. Her participation included versions of "Let Us Break Bread Together" and "Amazing Grace". She also joined the choir in the finale of "O Holy Night".

In February 2007, Proper Records reissued her live album ''Ring Them Bells'' (1995), which featured duets with artists ranging from Dar Williams and Mimi Fariña to the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The reissue features a 16-page booklet and six unreleased live tracks from the original recording sessions, including "Love Song to a Stranger", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Geordie", "Gracias a la Vida", "The Water Is Wide" and "Stones in the Road", bringing the total tracklisting to 21 songs (on two discs). In addition, Baez recorded a duet of "Jim Crow" with John Mellencamp which appears on his album ''Freedom's Road'' (2007). He has called the album a "Woody Guthrie rock album". The recording was heavily influenced by albums from the 1960s, which is why he invited an icon from that era to appear with him. Also in February 2007, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The day after receiving the honor, she appeared at the Grammy Awards ceremony and introduced a performance by the Dixie Chicks. September 9, 2008, saw the release of the studio album ''Day After Tomorrow'', produced by Steve Earle and featuring three of his songs. On June 29, 2008, Baez performed on the Acoustic Stage at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, U.K., playing out the final set to a packed audience. On July 6, 2008, she played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. During the concert's finale, she spontaneously danced on stage with a band of African percussionists.

On August 2, 2009, Baez played at the 50th Newport Folk Festival, which also marked the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough performance at the first festival. On October 14, 2009, PBS aired an episode of its documentary series, American Masters, entitled, ''Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound''. It was produced and directed by Mary Wharton. A DVD and CD of the sound track were released at the same time.

Social and political involvement

1950s

In 1956, Baez first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change which brought tears to her eyes. Several years later, the two became friends, later marching and demonstrating together on numerous occasions.

In 1957, at age 16, Joan committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California for an air-raid drill. After the bells rang, students were to leave the school, make their way to their home air-raid shelters, and pretend they were surviving an atomic blast. Protesting what she believed to be misleading government propaganda, Baez refused to leave her seat when instructed and continued reading a book. For this act she was punished by school officials, and was ostracized by the local population for being a supposed "Communist infiltrator."

Civil Rights

The early years of Joan Baez's career saw the civil-rights movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue. Her performance of "We Shall Overcome", the civil-rights anthem, at King's 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song. Baez again sang "We Shall Overcome" in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.

Her recording of the song "Birmingham Sunday" (1964) ,written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of ''4 Little Girls'' (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 bombing.

Baez joined King on his 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, singing for the marchers in the town of St. Jude, Alabama, as they camped the night before arriving in Montgomery. She linked arms with King to protect African-American schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi who were trying to attend "white" schools.

In 1966, she stood in the fields alongside César Chávez and California's migrant farm workers as they fought for fair wages and safe working conditions and performed at a benefit on behalf of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in December of that year. In 1972, she was at Chávez's side during his 24-day fast to draw attention to the farmworkers' struggle and can be seen singing "We Shall Overcome" during that fast in the film about the UFW, "Si Se Puede" ("It can be done").

Vietnam War

Highly visible in civil-rights marches, Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War. In 1964, she publicly endorsed resisting taxes by withholding sixty percent of her 1963 income taxes. In 1964, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence (along with her mentor Sandperl) and encouraged draft resistance at her concerts.

Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California and spent over a month in jail. ''(See also David Harris section below.)''

She was a frequent participant in anti-war marches and rallies, including:

numerous protests in New York City organized by the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, starting with the March 1966 Fifth Avenue Peace Parade, a free 1967 concert at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., that had been opposed by the Daughters of the American Revolution which attracted a crowd of 30,000 to hear her anti-war message,

the 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam protests.

There were many others, culminating in Ochs's The War Is Over celebration in New York City in May 1975.

During the Christmas season 1972, Baez joined a peace delegation traveling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, and to deliver Christmas mail to American prisoners of war. During her time there, she was caught in the U.S. military's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, North Vietnam, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days.

Her disquiet at the human-rights violations of communist Vietnam made her increasingly critical of its government and she organized the May 30, 1979, publication, of a full-page advertisement (published in four major U.S. newspapers) in which the communists were described as having created a nightmare, which put her at odds with a segment of the U.S. left wing, who were uncomfortable criticizing a leftist régime. In a letter of response, Jane Fonda said she was unable to substantiate the "claims" Baez made regarding the atrocities being committed by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.

Human rights

Baez was instrumental in founding the USA section of Amnesty International in the 1970s, and has remained an active supporter of the organization.

Baez' experiences regarding Vietnam's human-rights violations ultimately led her to found her own human-rights group, Humanitas International, whose focus was to target oppression wherever it occurred, criticizing right and left-wing régimes equally.

She toured Chile, Brazil and Argentina in 1981, but was prevented from performing in any of the three countries, for fear her criticism of their human-rights practices would reach mass audiences if she were given a podium. While there, she was surveiled and subjected to death threats. A film of the ill-fated tour, ''There but for Fortune'', was shown on PBS in 1982.

In 1989, after Tiananmen Massacre Baez wrote and released the song ''China'' to condemn the Chinese Communist Party for its bloody slaughter of thousands of student protesters who called for establishment of democratic republicanism.

In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea.

On July 17, 2006, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event they honored her for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.

Gay and lesbian rights

Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which proposed banning all gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk who was openly gay.

In the 1990s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization, and performed at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March.

Her song "Altar Boy and the Thief" from ''Blowin' Away'' (1977) was written as a dedication to her gay fanbase.

Environmental causes

On Earth Day 1999, Baez and Bonnie Raitt honored environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill with Raitt's ''Arthur M. Sohcot Award'' in person on her -high redwood treetop platform, where Hill had camped to protect ancient redwoods in the Headwaters Forest from logging.

War in Iraq

In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq (as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Gulf War).

In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Earle to join them in London, U.K., at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.

In the summer of 2004, Joan joined Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour" on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.

In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.

Opposing death penalty

In December 2005, Baez appeared and sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated.

Poverty

On May 23, 2006, Baez once again joined Julia "Butterfly" Hill, this time in a "tree sit" in a giant tree on the site of the South Central Farm in a poor neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, California. Baez and Hill were hoisted into the tree, where they remained overnight. The women, in addition to many other activists and celebrities, were protesting the imminent eviction of the community farmers and demolition of the site, which is the largest urban farm in the state. Because many of the South Central Farmers are immigrants from Central America, Baez sang several songs from her 1974 Spanish-language album, ''Gracias a la Vida'', including the title track and "No Nos Moverán" ("We Shall Not Be Moved").

2008 Presidential election

Throughout most of her career, Baez remained apprehensive about involving herself in party politics. However, on February 3, 2008, Baez wrote a letter to the editor at the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She noted: "Through all those years, I chose not to engage in party politics.... At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do. If anyone can navigate the contaminated waters of Washington, lift up the poor, and appeal to the rich to share their wealth, it is Sen. Barack Obama."

Playing at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Baez said during the introduction of a song that one reason she likes Obama is because he reminds her of another old friend of hers: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Although a highly political figure throughout most of her career, Baez had never publicly endorsed a major political party candidate prior to Obama. She performed at The White House on February 10, 2010 as part of an evening celebrating the music associated with the civil rights movement, performing "We Shall Overcome".

Iran's people

On June 25, 2009, Baez created a special version of "We Shall Overcome" with a few lines of Persian lyrics in support of peaceful protests by Iranian people. She recorded it in her home and posted the video on YouTube and on her personal website. She dedicated the song "Joe Hill", to the people of Iran during her concert at Merrill Auditorium, Portland, Maine on July 31, 2009. Joe Hill was a union martyr framed on a murder charge, whose spirit is said to be present today when workers fight for better conditions or pay.

Joan Baez Award

On March 18, 2011 Joan Baez was honored by Amnesty International at their 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco. The tribute to Joan Baez was the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights. Joan Baez was presented with the first award in recognition of her historic, ground-breaking and courageous human rights work with Amnesty International and beyond, and the inspiration she has given activists around the world. In future years, the award is to be presented to an artist - music, film, sculpture, paint or other medium - who has similarly helped advance human rights.

Personal life

Early relationships

Baez's first real boyfriend was a young man called Michael New, whom she met at college. Years later in 1979, he inspired her song "Michael". New was a fellow student from Trinidad, West Indies, who, like Baez, attended classes only occasionally. The two spent a considerable amount of time together, but Baez was unable to balance her blossoming career and her relationship. The two bickered and made up repeatedly, but it was apparent to Baez that New was beginning to resent her success and newfound local celebrity. One night she saw him kissing another woman on a street corner. Despite this, the relationship remained intact for several years, long after the two moved to California together in 1960.

Bob Dylan

Baez first met Dylan in 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in New York City's Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her debut album and her popularity as the emerging "Queen of Folk" was on the rise. Baez was initially unimpressed with the "urban hillbilly", but was impressed with one of Dylan's first compositions, "Song to Woody", and remarked that she would like to record it.

At the start, Dylan was more interested in Baez's younger sister, Mimi, but under the glare of media scrutiny that began to surround Baez and Dylan, their relationship began to develop into something more.

By 1963, Baez had already released three albums, two of which had been certified gold, and she invited Dylan on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival. The two performed the Dylan composition "With God on Our Side", a performance that set the stage for many more duets like it in the months and years to come. Typically while on tour, Baez would invite Dylan to sing on stage partly by himself and partly with her, much to the chagrin of her fans.

Before meeting Dylan, Baez's topical songs were very few: "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", "We Shall Overcome", and an assortment of negro spirituals. Baez would later say that Dylan's songs seemed to update the topics of protest and justice.

By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of the U.K., their relationship had slowly begun to fizzle out after they had been romantically involved off and on for nearly two years. The tour and simultaneous disintegration of their relationship was documented in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film ''Dont Look Back'' (1967).

Baez toured with Dylan as a performer on his Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975–76. She sang four songs with Dylan on the live album of the tour, ''The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue'', released in 2002. Baez appeared with Dylan in the one hour TV special, ''Hard Rain'', filmed at Fort Collins, Colorado, in May 1976. Baez also starred as 'The Woman In White' in the film ''Renaldo and Clara'' (1978), directed by Bob Dylan and filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue. Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 along with Carlos Santana.

Baez discussed her relationship with Dylan in Martin Scorsese's documentary film ''No Direction Home'' (2005), and in the PBS American Masters biography of Baez, ''How Sweet the Sound'' (2009).

Baez penned at least two songs about Dylan. In "To Bobby", written in 1972, she urged Dylan to return to political activism, while in "Diamonds & Rust", the title track from her 1975 album, she revisited her feelings for him in warm, yet direct terms.

References to Baez in Dylan's songs are far less clear. Baez herself has suggested that she was the subject of both "Visions of Johanna" and "Mama, You Been on My Mind", although the latter was more likely about his relationship with Suze Rotolo. As for "Visions of Johanna", "She Belongs to Me" and other songs alleged to have been written about Baez, neither Dylan nor biographers such as Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray have had anything definitive to say one way or the other regarding the subject of these songs.

David Harris

In October 1967, Baez, her mother, and nearly seventy other women were arrested at the Oakland, California, Armed Forces Induction Center for blocking the doorways of the building to prevent entrance by young inductees, and in support of young men who refused military induction. They were incarcerated in the Santa Rita Jail, and it was here that Baez met David Harris, who was kept on the men's side but who still managed to visit with Baez regularly.

The two formed a close bond upon their release and Baez moved into his draft-resistance commune in the hills above Stanford, California. The pair had known each other for three months when they decided to wed. After confirming the news to The Associated Press, media outlets began dedicating ample press to the impending nuptials (at one point, ''Time'' magazine referred to it as the "Wedding of the Century".)

After finding a pacifist preacher, a church outfitted with peace signs and writing a blend of Episcopalian and Quaker wedding vows, Baez and Harris married each other in New York City on March 26, 1968. Her friend Judy Collins sang at the ceremony. After the wedding, Baez and Harris moved into a home in the Los Altos Hills on of land called Struggle Mountain, part of a commune, where they tended gardens and were strict vegetarians.

A short time later, Harris refused induction to the armed forces and was indicted. On July 16, 1969, Harris was taken by federal marshals to prison. Baez was visibly pregnant in public in the months that followed, most notably at Woodstock Festival, where she performed a handful of songs in the early morning. The documentary film ''Carry it On'' was produced during this period, and was released in 1970. The film's behind-the-scenes looks at Harris's views and arrest and Baez on her subsequent performance tour was positively reviewed in ''Time Magazine'' and the ''New York Times''.

Among the songs Baez wrote about this period of her life are "A Song For David", "Myths", "Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)" and "Fifteen Months" (the amount of time Harris was imprisoned.)

Their son, Gabriel, was born in December 1969. Harris was released from Texas prison after 15 months, but the relationship began to dissolve and the couple divorced amicably in 1973. They shared custody of Gabriel, who primarily lived with Baez. Explaining the split, Baez wrote in her autobiography, "I am made to live alone." Baez and Harris remained on friendly terms throughout the years; they reunited on camera for the 2009 ''American Masters'' documentary for PBS. , she has not remarried. Their son Gabriel is a drummer and occasionally tours with his mother.

Later-life relationships

She dated Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A number of sources have stated that Jobs had considered asking Baez to marry him, except that her age at the time (early 40s) made the possibility of their having children unlikely. Baez mentioned Jobs in the acknowledgments in her 1987 memoir ''And a Voice to Sing With''.

Recent years

Baez is a resident of Woodside, California, and lives with her mother in a house that has a backyard tree house in which she spends a good deal of time meditating, writing, and "being close to nature."

Baez's son, percussionist Gabriel Harris, has been a member of her touring band in recent years; he and his wife Pamela live with their daughter Jasmine, in close proximity to Baez' home in Woodside. Baez' cousin, Peter Baez, was a medical marijuana activist. Another cousin, John C. Baez, is a mathematical physicist.

Popular culture

In comedy albums

The comedy album ''National Lampoon's Radio Dinner'' (1972) includes a Baez parody, "Pull the Triggers, Niggers" (deliberately misspelled as "Pull the Tregroes" on the album's outside liner notes), performed by Baez sound-alike Diana Reed. The satiric song made specific reference to Baez's ex-boyfriend Dylan's defense of Black Panther and convicted murderer, George Jackson.

In film

In the film ''Forrest Gump'' (1994), Jenny reveals that she wants "to be a famous folksinger, like Joan Baez." A Baez tour poster can be seen above her dorm-room bed in the same scene. A live Baez version of "Blowin' in the Wind" is featured on the film's soundtrack.

A character based on Baez appears in ''I'm Not There'' and is portrayed by Julianne Moore.

In music

"Here's to You" (music by Ennio Morricone, lyrics by Baez), a song Baez originally performed for the Italian film ''Sacco e Vanzetti'' (1971), became a hymn for the 1960s and 1970s civil-rights movement. It also appears on the soundtrack for the film ''The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou'' (2004). The song is also played over the credits of the quasi-documentary film ''Deutschland im Herbst'' (1977) and was recently used in the video game ''Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots''.

In print

Cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the comic strip ''Li'l Abner'', during the 1960s satirized Baez as "Joanie Phoanie". Joanie was an unabashed communist radical who sang songs of class warfare while hypocritically traveling in a limousine and charging outrageous performance fees to impoverished orphans. Capp had this character singing bizarre songs such as "A Tale of Bagels and Bacon" and "Molotov Cocktails for Two". Although Baez was upset by the parody in 1966, she admits to being more amused in recent years. "I wish I could have laughed at this at the time", she wrote in a caption under one of the strips, reprinted in her autobiography. "Mr. Capp confused me considerably. I'm sorry he's not alive to read this, it would make him chuckle".

In V.S. Naipaul's 1979 novel A Bend in the River, the protagonist Salim attends a dinner party hosted by Raymond, one of the President's closest political advisors. At the party, Raymond's wife Yvette plays a record of Joan Baez's cover of "Barbara Allen" establishing a subtle backdrop amidst the brewing tensions between the principal characters.

Baez was featured in the Joan Didion essay "Where the Kissing Never Stops" (1966), in Didion's compilation ''Slouching Towards Bethlehem'' (1968).

In television

Baez has been lampooned multiple times on ''Saturday Night Live'' by comedienne Nora Dunn. One skit features a game show entitled ''Make Joan Baez Laugh!'' where a dour Baez is ushered onstage while celebrity guests try their hand at getting her to a crack a smile.

Discography

References

Further reading

Baez, Joan. 1968. ''Daybreak — An Intimate Journal''. New York City, New York: Dial Press.

Baez, Joan, 1987. ''And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir''. New York City, New York: Summit Books. ISBN 0-671-40062-2

Baez, Joan. 1988. ''And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir''. Century Hutchinson, London, U.K. ISBN 0-7126-1827-9

Fuss, Charles J., 1996. ''Joan Baez: A Bio-Bibliography'' (Bio-Bibliographies in the Performing Arts Series). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Garza, Hedda, 1999. ''Joan Baez'' (Hispanics of Achievement). Chelsea House Publications.

Hajdu, David. 2001. ''Positively 4th Street. The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña And Richard Fariña''. New York City, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-86547-642-X

Heller, Jeffrey, 1991. ''Joan Baez: Singer With a Cause'' (People of Distinction Series), Children's Press.

Jaeger, Markus. 2006. ''Joan Baez and the Issue of Vietnam''. ibidem-Verlag, Austria. (book is in English)

Romero, Maritza, 1998. ''Joan Baez: Folk Singer for Peace'' (Great Hispanics of Our Time Series). Powerkids Books.

External links

; Main links

Joan Baez — official website

Joan Baez on Proper Records (her current European label)

Joan Baez in Vietnam 1972

Joan Baez page by Richard L. Hess

"Joan Baez: The Folk Heroine Mellows With Age" 1984 article and interview, reprinted in 2007 by ''Crawdaddy!''

Ira Sandperl's web site including photos with Baez

“Carry It On”, 1970 documentary film of Joan Baez and David Harris produced by The New Film Company, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts

; Video links

It Ain't Me Babe (Live 1965)

End of tour interview with Youth Peace Ambassador (November 21, 2008)

Joan Baez BBC Concert Live 1965

;Audio links

2008 Joan Baez concert, recorded at Harvard University's Sanders Theater from WGBH (FM) radio, Boston, Massachusetts

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:American anti–death penalty activists Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:Hispanic and Latino American women in activism

Category:American buskers Category:American environmentalists Category:American female guitarists

Category:American folk singers Category:American humanitarians Category:American musicians of English descent Category:American musicians of Mexican descent Category:American musicians of Scottish descent Category:American pacifists

Category:American Quakers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American sopranos Category:American tax resisters Category:Anti-poverty advocates Category:Civil rights activists Category:E1 Music artists Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:Nonviolence advocates Category:Palo Alto High School alumni Category:People from Staten Island Category:Spanish-language singers Category:Vanguard Records artists Category:Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España recipients Category:A&M Records artists Category:Virgin Records artists Category:English-language singers

af:Joan Baez an:Joan Baez ast:Joan Baez bn:জোয়ান বায়েজ ca:Joan Baez cs:Joan Baez cy:Joan Baez da:Joan Baez de:Joan Baez et:Joan Baez el:Τζόαν Μπαέζ es:Joan Baez eo:Joan Baez ext:Joan Baez eu:Joan Baez fa:جوآن بائز fr:Joan Baez ga:Joan Baez gl:Joan Baez ko:존 바에즈 hr:Joan Baez io:Joan Baez id:Joan Baez ia:Joan Baez it:Joan Baez he:ג'ואן באאז sw:Joan Baez la:Ioanna Baez hu:Joan Baez nah:Joan Baez nl:Joan Baez ja:ジョーン・バエズ no:Joan Baez nn:Joan Baez oc:Joan Baez pl:Joan Baez pt:Joan Baez ro:Joan Baez qu:Joan Baez ru:Баэз, Джоан scn:Joan Baez simple:Joan Baez sk:Joan Baezová sh:Joan Baez fi:Joan Baez sv:Joan Baez tr:Joan Baez vo:Joan Baez zh:琼·贝兹

Unit name	Beijing Special Weapons and Tactics
Country	People's Republic of China
Type	Special Forces
Branch	Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
Dates	December 2005 - Present
Specialization	Domestic Counter-Terrorism and Law Enforcement, including Riot control
Command structure	Under control of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau
Size	No official figures, estimated at 970
Nickname	SWAT, Beijing Special Police Force, Special Police Force, SPF
Battles	2008 Beijing Olympics security duties
Decorations	}}

The Beijing Special Weapons and Tactics Unit (Abbreviation: SWAT; Simplified Chinese: 北京特警总队; also known as Beijing Special Police Force) is a police unit in the People's Republic of China that deals with incidents beyond the capabilities of normal patrol officers such as hostage situations, high risk warrants and riot control. The unit, along with the Snow Leopard Commando Unit, was tasked with many of the security responsibilities of the 2008 Summer Olympics. It is reputed to be one of the most well-equipped and well-trained of all the SWAT/Special Police Units in the PRC. It is under the control of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

History

The Beijing SWAT unit and Snow Leopard Commando Unit were unveiled in a demonstration at the Beijing Police Academy on April 27, 2006 as part of a public relations effort to illustrate the capabilities of the People's Armed Police to deal with terrorism issues, protection of delegates, and to enforce law and order in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The unit has in recent years received training and advice from Western counter-terrorist units such as France's Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (RAID) unit.

On June 2008, the unit's 120-operator No. 1 Detachment was renamed Blue Sword Commando Unit.

Role

Typically expected of a SWAT-type unit from any country will be the role of a tactical response team to handle hostage-rescue, high-risk warrants, VIP or dangerous criminal escort duties and sometimes counter-terrorism and anti-riot duties.

Organization

The Beijing SWAT Unit is divided into sub-units consisting of but not limited to: a Helicopter Unit (飞虎队; nicknamed ''Flying Tigers''), an Underwater Diving team (蛙人队; nicknamed ''Frogmen''), female SWAT unit (女子特警队) and a Police Dog Unit (警犬队).

Training

Recruits are selected from six colleges, including the Beijing Sports University and Chinese People's Public Security University. Beijing SWAT operatives are trained, aside from combat tactics, in many subjects including English, etiquette, national culture, intelligence gathering, counter-terrorism and anti-riot, anti-nuclear biochemistry. All SWAT operatives undergo psychiatric evaluation.

Weapons and equipment

The unit is armed with a variety of domestically manufactured weapons such as Type 79 sub-machine guns, QBZ-95 assault rifles and QSZ-92 pistols, although they are also known to have purchased a mixture of American and European equipment to further augment their capabilities such as EOTech holographic weapon sights, battering rams, pepper spray, Cornershot, Heckler & Koch MP5 and ballistic shields among others. A major weapon they have is the Super Talon, a non-lethal weapon that fires a nylon net at any suspect by using compressed gas.

Vehicles

In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the local government has allocated CNY 280 million for the Beijing SWAT team to procure equipment for their operations, some of which has gone into purchasing specialized vehicles for various duties. These vehicles include the American-made GA-06 anti-riot APC, Hummer H2 and Ford assault vehicles, and Mercedes escort vehicles.

See also

Snow Leopard Commando Unit

Special Police Unit

References

SWAT Category:Law enforcement in the People's Republic of China Category:Non-military counter-terrorist organizations

Unit name	Snow Leopard Commando Unit
Country	People's Republic of China
Type	Special Forces
Branch	People's Armed Police
Dates	December 2002 (existence only revealed in 29th August, 2006) - Present
Specialization	Counter-Terrorism
Command structure	As the 3rd Group of the 13th Detachment under the PAP's Beijing General Corps
Size	Over 400 officers
Colors	White With Blood Specs
March	Goose Step
Battles	Conducted security operations in the 2008 Summer Olympics
Decorations	}}

The Snow Leopard Commando Unit (Abbreviation: SLCU; Simplified Chinese: 雪豹突击队) is a special police unit of the People's Republic of China under the People's Armed Police, tasked with counter-terrorism, riot control, and other special tasks such as anti-hijacking, and bomb disposal. The SLCU, along with the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau's Beijing SWAT unit, was tasked with many of the security responsibilities of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Officially, the SLCU is known to be as the 3rd Group, 13th Detachment, People's Armed Police Beijing General Corp.

The former ''Snow Wolf'' name was bestowed on the unit because of the known tenacity of arctic wolves and their ability to both survive and thrive in extremely harsh conditions.

History

After its secret establishment in October 2002, the SWCU unit had been trained out of the public eye for five years. The SWCU and the Beijing SWAT unit were unveiled in a demonstration at the Beijing Police Academy on April 27, 2006 as part of a public relations effort to illustrate the capabilities of the People's Armed Police to deal with terrorism, protection of delegates, and to enforce law and order in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The SLCU had participated in anti-terrorist exercises with Russia on September 4, 2007 known as "Cooperation-2007."

The unit had undergone a name change from its first name, now known officially as the Snow Leopard Commando Unit. According to Qu Liangfeng, a senior PAP officer in charge of the daily operations of SLCU, he said the name change was "inspired by the story of a brave and cunning snow leopard, which escaped an ambush by a hunter and his eight hunting dogs."

Training and selection

Only officers who have served in the People's Armed Police for a period of 1 to 2 years are eligible to apply, after which they will be put through a process of interviews, physical and psychological tests. The current average age (as of 2006) of SLCU officers is 22 years, as most of them entered the unit when they were about 18, thus making them amongst the youngest in the counter-terrorism community.

The officers who are eventually selected for the course go through an arduous period of physical training, driving lessons for various vehicles, and weapons training. Their physical training includes 200 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, 100 squats, lifting barbells 200 times and carrying a 35 kg load for a 10 km cross-country run. They are then assigned to the Beijing General Corps' 13th Detachment, where the SLCU is based.

Organisation

The SLCU consists of four squadrons assigned with very specific responsibilities:

Weapon of mass destruction>Anti-WMD Terrorism

12th Squadron	Snipers

Weapons and equipment

The SLCU was shown in the demonstrations armed with the QBZ-95 series of rifles and QSZ-92 pistols, but they will most probably also be armed with a wide variety of submachine guns and other firearms. The unit has spent about CNY 2 million (approximately US$ 258,000) in domestically manufactured armored personnel carriers for riot-control and has also imported CNY 4 million worth of American manufactured vehicles and equipment.

Each SLCU operator is estimated to be outfitted with CNY 300,000 (approximately US$ 39,000) worth of equipment, including their body armor, communications equipment, etc.

Uniform

The standard uniform layout has the arm patch sewn on the right arm, with the unit badge above the right breast pocket. The words "SPECIAL POLICE GRP" (Special Police Group) is embroidered on the right side of the tactical vest or body armor. It is interesting to note that this is a divergence from all the other P.R.C. uniformed units, which have their badges and patches embroidered on the left side of their uniforms instead.

See also

Special Police Unit

Beijing Special Weapons and Tactics Unit

References

Category:Special forces of the People's Republic of China Category:Law enforcement in the People's Republic of China

zh:雪豹突擊隊

Name	Hillary Rodham Clinton
Office	67th United States Secretary of State
President	Barack Obama
Deputy	James SteinbergWilliam Burns
Term start	January 21, 2009
Predecessor	Condoleezza Rice
Jr/sr2	United States Senator
State2	New York
Term start2	January 3, 2001
Term end2	January 21, 2009
Preceded2	Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Succeeded2	Kirsten Gillibrand
Office3	First Lady of the United States
Term start3	January 20, 1993
Term end3	January 20, 2001
Preceded3	Barbara Bush
Succeeded3	Laura Bush
Office4	First Lady of Arkansas
Term start4	January 11, 1983
Term end4	December 12, 1992
Predecessor4	Gay Daniels White
Successor4	Betty Tucker
Term start5	January 9, 1979
Term end5	January 19, 1981
Predecessor5	Barbara Pryor
Successor5	Gay Daniels White
Birth date	October 26, 1947
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Party	Democratic Party
Relations	Hugh E. Rodham (father, deceased)Dorothy Howell Rodham (mother)Hugh Rodham (brother)Tony Rodham (brother)
Spouse	Bill Clinton
Children	Chelsea
Residence	Chappaqua, New York, United States
Alma mater	Wellesley College (B.A.)Yale Law School (J.D.)
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Methodist
Signature	Hillary Rodham Clinton Signature.svg
Website	Official website }}

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (; born October 26, 1947) is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham first attracted national attention in 1969 for her remarks as the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College. She embarked on a career in law after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973. Following a stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas in 1974 and married Bill Clinton in 1975. Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977 and became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978. Named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979, she was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as Governor, she successfully led a task force to reform Arkansas's education system. She sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart and several other corporations.

In 1994 as First Lady of the United States, her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress. However, in 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a role in advocating the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act. Her years as First Lady drew a polarized response from the American public. The only First Lady to have been subpoenaed, she testified before a federal grand jury in 1996 due to the Whitewater controversy, but was never charged with wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during her husband's administration. The state of her marriage was the subject of considerable speculation following the Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

After moving to the state of New York, Clinton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2000. That election marked the first time an American First Lady had run for public office; Clinton was also the first female senator to represent the state. In the Senate, she initially supported the Bush administration on some foreign policy issues, including a vote for the Iraq War Resolution. She subsequently opposed the administration on its conduct of the war in Iraq and on most domestic issues. Senator Clinton was reelected by a wide margin in 2006. In the 2008 presidential nomination race, Hillary Clinton won more primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in American history, but narrowly lost to Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

As Secretary of State, Clinton became the first former First Lady to serve in a president's cabinet. She has put into place institutional changes seeking to maximize departmental effectiveness and promote the empowerment of women worldwide, and has set records for most-traveled secretary for time in office. She has been at the forefront of the U.S. response to the 2011 Middle East protests, including advocating for the military intervention in Libya.

Early life and education

Early life

Hillary Diane Rodham was born at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in a United Methodist family, first in Chicago and then, from the age of three, in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois. Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, was the son of Welsh and English immigrants; he managed a successful small business in the textile industry. Her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell, is a homemaker of English, Scottish, French, French Canadian, and Welsh descent. She has two younger brothers, Hugh and Tony.

As a child, Hillary Rodham was a teacher's favorite at her public schools in Park Ridge. She participated in swimming, baseball, and other sports. She also earned numerous awards as a Brownie and Girl Scout. She attended Maine East High School, where she participated in student council, the school newspaper, and was selected for National Honor Society. For her senior year, she was redistricted to Maine South High School, where she was a National Merit Finalist and graduated in the top five percent of her class of 1965. Her mother wanted her to have an independent, professional career, and her father, otherwise a traditionalist, held the modern notion that his daughter's abilities and opportunities should not be limited by gender.

Raised in a politically conservative household, at age thirteen Rodham helped canvass South Side Chicago following the very close 1960 U.S. presidential election, where she found evidence of electoral fraud against Republican candidate Richard Nixon. She then volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964. Rodham's early political development was shaped most by her high school history teacher (like her father, a fervent anticommunist), who introduced her to Goldwater's classic ''The Conscience of a Conservative'', and by her Methodist youth minister (like her mother, concerned with issues of social justice), with whom she saw and met civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in Chicago in 1962.

College

In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College, where she majored in political science. During her freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans; with this Rockefeller Republican-oriented group, she supported the elections of John Lindsay and Edward Brooke. She later stepped down from this position, as her views changed regarding the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. In a letter to her youth minister at this time, she described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal." In contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it. In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty. In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969; she was instrumental in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges. A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first woman President of the United States. So she could better understand her changing political views, Professor Alan Schechter assigned Rodham to intern at the House Republican Conference, and she attended the "Wellesley in Washington" summer program. Rodham was invited by moderate New York Republican Representative Charles Goodell to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination. Rodham attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami. However, she was upset by how Richard Nixon's campaign portrayed Rockefeller and by what she perceived as the convention's "veiled" racist messages, and left the Republican Party for good.

Returning to Wellesley for her final year, Rodham wrote her senior thesis about the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky under Professor Schechter (years later while she was First Lady, access to the thesis was restricted at the request of the White House and it became the subject of some speculation). In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, with departmental honors in political science. Following pressure from some fellow students, she became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver its commencement address. Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes. She was featured in an article published in ''Life'' magazine, due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Edward Brooke, who had spoken before her at the commencement. She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers. That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthy conditions).

Law school

Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the ''Yale Review of Law and Social Action''. During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, ''Beyond the Best Interests of the Child'' (1973). She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor. In the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. There she researched migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education. Edelman later became a significant mentor. She was recruited by political advisor Anne Wexler to work on the 1970 campaign of Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Duffey, with Rodham later crediting Wexler with providing her first job in politics.

In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. The firm was well-known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members); Rodham worked on child custody and other cases. Clinton canceled his original summer plans, in order to live with her in California; the couple continued living together in New Haven when they returned to law school. The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973, having stayed on an extra year to be with Clinton. Clinton first proposed marriage to her following graduation, but she declined. She began a year of postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center. Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the ''Harvard Educational Review'' in late 1973. Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals" and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but that instead courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis. The article became frequently cited in the field.

Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas

From the East Coast to Arkansas

During her postgraduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. During 1974, she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal. Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum, Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment. The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.

By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future; Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide her career; Wright thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president. Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she continued to demur. However, after failing the District of Columbia bar exam and passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head". She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were brighter. Clinton was then teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, she moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where Bill Clinton also was. She gave classes in criminal law, where she was considered a rigorous teacher and tough grader, and was the first director of the school's legal aid clinic. She still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and that her accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else's.

Early Arkansas years

Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and Hillary finally agreed to marry. Their wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room. She announced she was keeping the name Hillary Rodham, to keep their professional lives separate and avoid apparent conflicts of interest and because "it showed that I was still me," although her decision upset their mothers. Bill Clinton had lost the congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Arkansas Attorney General, and so the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock. There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence. She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law while also working ''pro bono'' in child advocacy; she rarely performed litigation work in court.

Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977 and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979. The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances and that in serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted. An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate." Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades", while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority, allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents, and argued that her work was legal "crit" theory run amok.

In 1977, Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund. Later that year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had been the 1976 campaign director of field operations in Indiana) appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981. From mid-1978 to mid-1980, she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so. During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million; subsequently she successfully fought President Ronald Reagan's attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.

Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year, where she successfully secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.

In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm. From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband. During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham made a spectacular profit from trading cattle futures contracts; an initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months. The couple also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time.

On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea, her only child. In November 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his bid for reelection.

Later Arkansas years

Bill Clinton returned to the governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", to assuage the concerns of Arkansas voters; she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law to campaign for him full-time. As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was named chair of the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee in 1983, where she sought to reform the state's court-sanctioned public education system. In one of the Clinton governorship's most important initiatives, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association, to establish mandatory teacher testing and state standards for curriculum and classroom size. In 1985, she also introduced Arkansas's Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy. She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.

Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours, but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there. She seldom did trial work, but the firm considered her a "rainmaker" because she brought in clients, partly thanks to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections. She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges. Bill Clinton's Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial reelection campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons deflected the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated.

From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation, which funded a variety of New Left interest groups. From 1987 to 1991, she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it. She was twice named by the ''National Law Journal'' as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991. When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary considered running, but private polls were unfavorable and, in the end, he ran and was reelected for the final time.

Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992). In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992), Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992) and Lafarge (1990–1992). TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law. Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to the board. Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.

Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992

Hillary Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed claims that Bill Clinton had had an extramarital affair with Arkansas lounge singer Gennifer Flowers. In response, the Clintons appeared together on ''60 Minutes'', where Bill Clinton denied the affair but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage." This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton made culturally disparaging remarks about Tammy Wynette and her outlook on marriage, and about women staying home and baking cookies and having teas, that were ill-considered by her own admission. Bill Clinton said that in electing him, the nation would "get two for the price of one", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume. Beginning with Daniel Wattenberg's August 1992 ''The American Spectator'' article "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock", Hillary Clinton's own past ideological and ethical record came under conservative attack. At least twenty other articles in major publications also drew comparisons between her and Lady Macbeth.

First Lady of the United States

Role as First Lady

When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States, and announced that she would be using that form of her name. She was the first First Lady to hold a postgraduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House. She was also the first to have an office in the West Wing of the White House in addition to the usual First Lady offices in the East Wing. She was part of the innermost circle vetting appointments to the new administration, and her choices filled at least eleven top-level positions and dozens more lower-level ones. She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history, save for Eleanor Roosevelt.

Some critics called it inappropriate for the First Lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters pointed out that Clinton's role in policy was no different from that of other White House advisors and that voters were well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's presidency. Bill Clinton's campaign promise of "two for the price of one" led opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-presidents", or sometimes the Arkansas label "Billary". The pressures of conflicting ideas about the role of a First Lady were enough to send Clinton into "imaginary discussions" with the also-politically-active Eleanor Roosevelt. from the time she came to Washington, she also found refuge in a prayer group of The Fellowship that featured many wives of conservative Washington figures. Triggered in part by the death of her father in April 1993, she publicly sought to find a synthesis of Methodist teachings, liberal religious political philosophy, and ''Tikkun'' editor Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning" to overcome what she saw as America's "sleeping sickness of the soul" and that would lead to a willingness "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century, moving into a new millennium." Other segments of the public focused on her appearance, which had evolved over time from inattention to fashion during her days in Arkansas, to a popular site in the early days of the World Wide Web devoted to showing her many different, and frequently analyzed, hairstyles as First Lady, to an appearance on the cover of ''Vogue'' magazine in 1998.

Health care and other policy initiatives

[[File:HillaryGallup1992-1996.PNG|thumb|300px|right|Hillary Rodham Clinton's Gallup Poll favorable and unfavorable ratings, 1992–1996 ]] In January 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform. She privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority than the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (which she was also unenthusiastic about the merits of). The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. Its opponents quickly derided the plan as "Hillarycare"; some protesters against it became vitriolic, and during a July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, she was forced to wear a bulletproof vest at times.

The plan did not receive enough support for a floor vote in either the House or the Senate, although Democrats controlled both chambers, and the proposal was abandoned in September 1994. Clinton later acknowledged in her book, ''Living History'', that her political inexperience partly contributed to the defeat, but mentioned that many other factors were also responsible. The First Lady's approval ratings, which had generally been in the high-50s percent range during her first year, fell to 44 percent in April 1994 and 35 percent by September 1994. Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections, which saw a net Republican gain of fifty-three seats in the House election and seven in the Senate election, winning control of both; many analysts and pollsters found the plan to be a major factor in the Democrats' defeat, especially among independent voters. The White House subsequently sought to downplay Hillary Clinton's role in shaping policy. Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.

Along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind the passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents could not provide them with health coverage, and conducted outreach efforts on behalf of enrolling children in the program once it became law. She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare. She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health. The First Lady worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome. Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice. In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady. In 1999, she was instrumental in the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care. As First Lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997), on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997), and on Children and Adolescents (2000). She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000) and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).

Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time, breaking the mark for most-traveled First Lady held by Pat Nixon. She did not hold a security clearance or attend National Security Council meetings, but played a soft power role in U.S. diplomacy. A March 1995 five-nation trip to South Asia, on behest of the U.S. State Department and without her husband, sought to improve relations with India and Pakistan. Clinton was troubled by the plight of women she encountered, but found a warm response from the people of the countries she visited and a gained better relationship with the American press corps. The trip was a transformative experience for her and presaged her eventual career in diplomacy. In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued very forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in the People's Republic of China itself, declaring "that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights". Delegates from over 180 countries heard her say: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all." In doing so, she resisted both internal administration and Chinese pressure to soften her remarks. She was one of the most prominent international figures during the late 1990s to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban. She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries. It and Clinton's own visits encouraged women to make themselves heard in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Whitewater and other investigations

The Whitewater controversy was the focus of media attention from the publication of a ''New York Times'' report during the 1992 presidential campaign, and throughout her time as First Lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation; at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operated Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm and may have been improperly subsidizing Whitewater losses. Madison Guaranty later failed, and Clinton's work at Rose was scrutinized for a possible conflict of interest in representing the bank before state regulators that her husband had appointed; she claimed she had done minimal work for the bank. Independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were. The records were found in the First Lady's White House book room after a two-year search, and delivered to investigators in early 1996. The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation about how they surfaced and where they had been; Clinton's staff attributed the problem to continual changes in White House storage areas since the move from the Arkansas Governor's Mansion. After the discovery of the records, on January 26, 1996, Clinton made history by becoming the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a Federal grand jury. After several Independent Counsels had investigated, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated there was insufficient evidence that either Clinton had engaged in criminal wrongdoing.

Other investigations took place during Hillary Clinton's time as First Lady. Scrutiny of the May 1993 firings of the White House Travel Office employees, an affair that became known as "Travelgate", began with charges that the White House had used audited financial irregularities in the Travel Office operation as an excuse to replace the staff with friends from Arkansas. The 1996 discovery of a two-year-old White House memo caused the investigation to focus more on whether Hillary Clinton had orchestrated the firings and whether the statements she made to investigators about her role in the firings were true. The 2000 final Independent Counsel report concluded she was involved in the firings and that she had made "factually false" statements, but that there was insufficient evidence that she knew the statements were false, or knew that her actions would lead to firings, to prosecute her. Following deputy White House counsel Vince Foster's July 1993 suicide, allegations were made that Hillary Clinton had ordered the removal of potentially damaging files (related to Whitewater or other matters) from Foster's office on the night of his death. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr investigated this, and by 1999, Starr was reported to be holding the investigation open, despite his staff having told him there was no case to be made. When Starr's successor Robert Ray issued his final Whitewater reports in 2000, no claims were made against Hillary Clinton regarding this.

In March 1994 newspaper reports revealed her spectacular profits from cattle futures trading in 1978–1979; allegations were made in the press of conflict of interest and disguised bribery, and several individuals analyzed her trading records, but no formal investigation was made and she was never charged with any wrongdoing. An outgrowth of the Travelgate investigation was the June 1996 discovery of improper White House access to hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees, an affair that some called "Filegate". Accusations were made that Hillary Clinton had requested these files and that she had recommended hiring an unqualified individual to head the White House Security Office. The 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Hillary Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.

Lewinsky scandal

[[File:HillaryGallup1997-2000.PNG|thumb|330px|right|Hillary Rodham Clinton's Gallup Poll favorable and unfavorable ratings, 1997–2000 ]] In 1998, the Clintons' relationship became the subject of much speculation when investigations revealed that the President had had extramarital sexual activities with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandal eventually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. When the allegations against her husband were first made public, Hillary Clinton stated that they were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Clinton political enemies rather than any wrongdoing by her husband. She later said that she had been misled by her husband's initial claims that no affair had taken place. After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky became incontrovertible, she issued a public statement reaffirming her commitment to their marriage, but privately was reported to be furious at him and was unsure if she wanted to stay in the marriage.

There was a variety of public reactions to Hillary Clinton after this: some women admired her strength and poise in private matters made public, some sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior, others criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions, while still others accused her of cynically staying in a failed marriage as a way of keeping or even fostering her own political influence. Her public approval ratings in the wake of the revelations shot upward to around 70 percent, the highest they had ever been. In her 2003 memoir, she would attribute her decision to stay married to "a love that has persisted for decades" and add: "No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met."

Traditional duties

Clinton initiated and was Founding Chair of the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to preserve and restore historic items and sites, including the flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio. She was head of the White House Millennium Council, and hosted Millennium Evenings, a series of lectures that discussed futures studies, one of which became the first live simultaneous webcast from the White House. Clinton also created the first Sculpture Garden there, which displayed large contemporary American works of art loaned from museums in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.

In the White House, Clinton placed donated handicrafts of contemporary American artisans, such as pottery and glassware, on rotating display in the state rooms. She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room to be historically authentic to the period of James Monroe, the redecoration of the Treaty Room into the presidential study along 19th century lines, and the redecoration of the Map Room to how it looked during World War II. Clinton hosted many large-scale events at the White House, such as a Saint Patrick's Day reception, a state dinner for visiting Chinese dignitaries, a contemporary music concert that raised funds for music education in public schools, a New Year's Eve celebration at the turn of the 21st century, and a state dinner honoring the bicentennial of the White House in November 2000.

Senate election of 2000

The long-serving United States Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, announced his retirement in November 1998. Several prominent Democratic figures, including Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, urged Clinton to run for Moynihan's open seat in the United States Senate election of 2000. Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999. She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. Initially, Clinton expected to face Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of New York City, as her Republican opponent in the election. However, Giuliani withdrew from the race in May 2000 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and having developments in his personal life become very public, and Clinton instead faced Rick Lazio, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing New York's 2nd congressional district. Throughout the campaign, opponents accused Clinton of carpetbagging, as she had never resided in New York nor participated in the state's politics before this race. Clinton began her campaign by visiting every county in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings. During the campaign, she devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions. Clinton vowed to improve the economic situation in those areas, promising to deliver 200,000 jobs to the state over her term. Her plan included tax credits to reward job creation and encourage business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care.

The contest drew national attention. Lazio blundered during a September debate by seeming to invade Clinton's personal space trying to get her to sign a fundraising agreement. The campaigns of Clinton and Lazio, along with Giuliani's initial effort, spent a record combined $90 million. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent. She was sworn in as United States Senator on January 3, 2001.

United States Senator

First term

Upon entering the Senate, Clinton maintained a low public profile and built relationships with senators from both parties. She forged alliances with religiously inclined senators by becoming a regular participant in the Senate Prayer Breakfast.

Clinton has served on five Senate committees: Committee on Budget (2001–2002), Committee on Armed Services (since 2003), Committee on Environment and Public Works (since 2001), Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (since 2001) and Special Committee on Aging. She is also a Commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (since 2001).

Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in quickly securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment. She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders. Clinton voted for the USA Patriot Act in October 2001. In 2005, when the act was up for renewal, she worked to address some of the civil liberties concerns with it, before voting in favor of a compromise renewed act in March 2006 that gained large majority support.

Clinton strongly supported the 2001 U.S. military action in Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who suffered under the Taliban government. Clinton voted in favor of the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution, which authorized United States President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq, should such action be required to enforce a United Nations Security Council Resolution after pursuing with diplomatic efforts.

After the Iraq War began, Clinton made trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit American troops stationed there. On a visit to Iraq in February 2005, Clinton noted that the insurgency had failed to disrupt the democratic elections held earlier, and that parts of the country were functioning well. Noting that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she cointroduced legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain. In late 2005, Clinton said that while immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake, Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also misguided, as it gave Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves." Her stance caused frustration among those in the Democratic Party who favored immediate withdrawal. Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for veterans, and lobbied against the closure of several military bases. [[File:HillaryGallup2001-2009.gif|thumb|300px|right|Hillary Rodham Clinton's Gallup Poll favorable and unfavorable ratings, 2001–2009 ]] Senator Clinton voted against President Bush's two major tax cut packages, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Clinton voted against the 2005 confirmation of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States and the 2006 confirmation of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.

In 2005, Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game ''Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas''. Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, she introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. In 2004 and 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Looking to establish a "progressive infrastructure" to rival that of American conservatism, Clinton played a formative role in conversations that led to the 2003 founding of former Clinton administration chief of staff John Podesta's Center for American Progress, shared aides with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, founded in 2003, and advised the Clintons' former antagonist David Brock's Media Matters for America, created in 2004. Following the 2004 Senate elections, she successfully pushed new Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid to create a Senate war room to handle daily political messaging.

Reelection campaign of 2006

In November 2004, Clinton announced that she would seek a second Senate term. The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, withdrew from the contest after several months of poor campaign performance. Clinton easily won the Democratic nomination over opposition from antiwar activist Jonathan Tasini. Clinton's eventual opponents in the general election were Republican candidate John Spencer, a former mayor of Yonkers, along with several third-party candidates. She won the election on November 7, 2006, with 67 percent of the vote to Spencer's 31 percent, carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties. Clinton spent $36 million for her reelection, more than any other candidate for Senate in the 2006 elections did. Some Democrats criticized her for spending too much in a one-sided contest, while some supporters were concerned she did not leave more funds for a potential presidential bid in 2008. In the following months, she transferred $10 million of her Senate funds toward her presidential campaign.

Second term

Clinton opposed the Iraq War troop surge of 2007. In March 2007, she voted in favor of a war-spending bill that required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by a deadline; it passed almost completely along party lines but was subsequently vetoed by President Bush. In May 2007, a compromise war funding bill that removed withdrawal deadlines but tied funding to progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government passed the Senate by a vote of 80–14 and would be signed by Bush; Clinton was one of those who voted against it. Clinton responded to General David Petraeus's September 2007 Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq by saying, "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief."

In March 2007, in response to the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. In May and June 2007, regarding the high-profile, hotly debated comprehensive immigration reform bill known as the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, Clinton cast several votes in support of the bill, which eventually failed to gain cloture.

As the financial crisis of 2007–2008 reached a peak with the liquidity crisis of September 2008, Clinton supported the proposed bailout of United States financial system, voting in favor of the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, saying that it represented the interests of the American people. It passed the Senate 74–25.

Presidential campaign of 2008

Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for United States President since at least early 2003. On January 20, 2007, Clinton announced via her web site the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008; she stated, "I'm in, and I'm in to win." No woman had ever been nominated by a major party for President of the United States. In April 2007, the Clintons liquidated a blind trust, that had been established when Bill Clinton became president in 1993, to avoid the possibility of ethical conflicts or political embarrassments in the trust as Hillary Clinton undertook her presidential race. Later disclosure statements revealed that the couple's worth was now upwards of $50 million, and that they had earned over $100 million since 2000, with most of it coming from Bill Clinton's books, speaking engagements, and other activities.

Clinton led candidates competing for the Democratic nomination in opinion polls for the election throughout the first half of 2007. Most polls placed Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina as Clinton's closest competitors. Clinton and Obama both set records for early fundraising, swapping the money lead each quarter. By September 2007, polling in the first six states holding Democratic primaries or caucuses showed that Clinton was leading in all of them, with the races being closest in Iowa and South Carolina. By the following month, national polls showed Clinton far ahead of Democratic competitors. At the end of October, Clinton suffered a rare poor debate performance against Obama, Edwards, and her other opponents. Obama's message of "change" began to resonate with the Democratic electorate better than Clinton's message of "experience". The race tightened considerably, especially in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, with Clinton losing her lead in some polls by December.

In the first vote of 2008, she placed third in the January 3 Iowa Democratic caucus to Obama and Edwards. Obama gained ground in national polling in the next few days, with all polls predicting a victory for him in the New Hampshire primary. However, Clinton gained a surprise win there on January 8, defeating Obama narrowly. Explanations for her New Hampshire comeback varied but often centered on her being seen more sympathetically, especially by women, after her eyes welled with tears and her voice broke while responding to a voter's question the day before the election.

The nature of the contest fractured in the next few days. Several remarks by Bill Clinton and other surrogates, and a remark by Hillary Clinton concerning Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon B. Johnson, were perceived by many as, accidentally or intentionally, limiting Obama as a racially oriented candidate or otherwise denying the post-racial significance and accomplishments of his campaign. Despite attempts by both Hillary Clinton and Obama to downplay the issue, Democratic voting became more polarized as a result, with Clinton losing much of her support among African Americans. She lost by a two-to-one margin to Obama in the January 26 South Carolina primary, setting up, with Edwards soon dropping out, an intense two-person contest for the twenty-two February 5 Super Tuesday states. Bill Clinton had made more statements attracting criticism for their perceived racial implications late in the South Carolina campaign, and his role was seen as damaging enough to her that a wave of supporters within and outside of the campaign said the former President "needs to stop."

On Super Tuesday, Clinton won the largest states, such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, while Obama won more states; they almost evenly split the total popular vote. But Obama was gaining more pledged delegates for his share of the popular vote due to better exploitation of the Democratic proportional allocation rules.

The Clinton campaign had counted on winning the nomination by Super Tuesday, and was unprepared financially and logistically for a prolonged effort; lagging in Internet fundraising, Clinton began loaning her campaign money. There was continuous turmoil within the campaign staff and she made several top-level personnel changes. Obama won the next eleven February caucuses and primaries across the country, often by large margins, and took a significant pledged delegate lead over Clinton. On March 4, Clinton broke the string of losses by winning in Ohio among other places, where her criticism of NAFTA, a major legacy of her husband's presidency, had been a key issue. Throughout the campaign, Obama dominated caucuses, which the Clinton campaign largely ignored organizing for. Obama did well in primaries where African Americans or younger, college-educated, or more affluent voters were heavily represented; Clinton did well in primaries where Hispanics or older, non-college-educated, or working-class white voters predominated. Some Democratic party leaders expressed concern that the drawn-out campaign between the two could damage the winner in the general election contest against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, especially if an eventual triumph for Clinton was won via party-appointed superdelegates. On April 22, she won the Pennsylvania primary, and kept her campaign alive. However, on May 6, a narrower-than-expected win in the Indiana primary coupled with a large loss in the North Carolina primary ended any realistic chance she had of winning the nomination. She vowed to stay on through the remaining primaries, but stopped attacks against Obama; as one advisor stated, "She could accept losing. She could not accept quitting." She won some of the remaining contests, and indeed, over the last three months of the campaign she won more delegates, states, and votes than Obama, but it was not enough to overcome Obama's lead.

Following the final primaries on June 3, 2008, Obama had gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee. In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama, declaring, "The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama." By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763; at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395, with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner. Clinton and Obama each received over 17 million votes during the nomination process, with both breaking the previous record. Clinton also eclipsed, by a very large margin, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 mark for most primaries and delegates won by a woman. Clinton gave a passionate speech supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and campaigned frequently for him in Fall 2008, which concluded with his victory over McCain in the general election on November 4. Clinton's campaign ended up severely in debt; she owed millions of dollars to outside vendors and wrote off the $13 million that she lent it herself.

Secretary of State

Nomination and confirmation

In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration, and on November 21, reports indicated that she had accepted the position. On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State. Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure". As part of the nomination and in order to relieve concerns of conflict of interest, Bill Clinton agreed to accept several conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center and Clinton Global Initiative.

The appointment required a Saxbe fix, passed and signed into law in December 2008. Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration; two days later, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton. By this time, Clinton's public approval rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point since the Lewinsky scandal. On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2. Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day. She became the first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet.

Tenure

Clinton spent her initial days as Secretary of State telephoning dozens of world leaders and indicating that U.S. foreign policy would change direction: "We have a lot of damage to repair." She advocated an expanded role in global economic issues for the State Department and cited the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq where the Defense Department had conducted diplomatic missions. She pushed for a larger international affairs budget; the Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget contained a 7 percent increase for the State Department and other international programs. In March 2009, Clinton prevailed over Vice President Joe Biden on an internal debate to send an additional 20,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan. An elbow fracture and subsequent painful recuperation caused Clinton to miss two foreign trips in June 2009.

Clinton announced the most ambitious of her departmental reforms, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which establishes specific objectives for the State Department’s diplomatic missions abroad; it is modeled after a similar process in the Defense Department that she was familiar with from her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee. (The first such review was issued in late 2010 and called for the U.S. leading through "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises. It also sought to institutionalize goals of empowering women throughout the world.) In September, Clinton unveiled the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative at the annual meeting of her husband's Clinton Global Initiative. The new initiative seeks to battle hunger worldwide as a strategic part of U.S. foreign policy, rather than just react to food shortage emergencies as they occur, and emphasizes the role of women farmers. In October, on a trip to Switzerland, Clinton’s intervention overcame last-minute snags and saved the signing of an historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations. In Pakistan, she engaged in several unusually blunt discussions with students, talk show hosts, and tribal elders, in an attempt to repair the Pakistani image of the U.S.

In a major speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies between the Iron Curtain and the free and unfree Internet. Chinese officials reacted negatively towards it, and it garnered attention as the first time a senior American official had clearly defined the Internet as a key element of American foreign policy. By mid-2010, Clinton and Obama had forged a good working relationship; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside, and was careful that neither she nor her husband would upstage him. She met with him weekly, but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents. In July 2010, Secretary Clinton visited Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan, all the while preparing for the July 31 wedding of daughter Chelsea amid much media attention. In late November 2010, Clinton led the U.S. damage control effort after WikiLeaks released confidential State Department cables containing blunt statements and assessments by U.S. and foreign diplomats. A few of the cables released by WikiLeaks concerned Clinton directly: they revealed that directions to members of the foreign service, written by the CIA, had gone out in 2009 under her (systematically attached) name to gather biometric and other personal details on foreign diplomats, including officials of the United Nations and U.S. allies.

The 2011 Egyptian protests posed the biggest foreign policy crisis for the administration yet. Clinton was in the forefront of U.S. public response to it, quickly evolving from an early assessment that the government of Hosni Mubarak was "stable" to a stance that there needed to be an "orderly transition [to] a democratic participatory government" to a condemnation of violence against the protesters. Obama also came to rely upon Clinton's advice, organization, and personal connections in the behind-the-scenes response to developments. As protests spread throughout the region, Clinton was at the forefront of a U.S. response that she recognized was sometimes contradictory, backing some regimes while supporting protesters against others. As the 2011 Libyan uprising took place, Clinton's shift in favor of military intervention was a key turning point in overcoming internal administration opposition and gaining the backing for, and U.N. approval of, the 2011 military intervention in Libya. Following the successful May 2011 U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden, Clinton played a key role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead al-Qaeda leader.

In the Mideast turmoil, Clinton saw an opportunity to advance one of the central themes of her tenure, the empowerment and welfare of women and girls worldwide. By now Clinton had set the record for most-traveled Secretary of State for a comparable period of time, logging and visiting 79 countries. Throughout her term, Clinton had indicated she had no interest in running for president again or in holding any other office. In March 2011, she expanded upon that by saying she was not interested in serving a second term as Secretary of State should Obama be re-elected in 2012.

Political positions

In a Gallup poll conducted during May 2005, 54 percent of respondents considered Clinton a liberal, 30 percent considered her a moderate, and 9 percent considered her a conservative.

Several organizations attempted to measure Clinton's place on the political spectrum scientifically using her Senate votes. ''National Journal'''s 2004 study of roll-call votes assigned Clinton a rating of 30 in the political spectrum, relative to the then-current Senate, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative. ''National Journal'''s subsequent rankings placed her as the 32nd-most liberal senator in 2006 and 16th-most liberal senator in 2007. A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University, Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University found her to be likely the sixth-to-eighth-most liberal Senator. ''The Almanac of American Politics'', edited by Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, rated her votes from 2003 through 2006 as liberal or conservative, with 100 as the highest rating, in three areas: Economic, Social, and Foreign; averaged for the four years, the ratings are: Economic = 75 liberal, 23 conservative; Social = 83 liberal, 6 conservative; Foreign = 66 liberal, 30 conservative. Average = 75 liberal, 20 conservative.

Interest groups also gave Clinton scores based on how well her Senate votes aligned with the positions of the group. Through 2008, she had an average lifetime 90 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action and a lifetime 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.

Writings and recordings

As First Lady of the United States, Clinton published a weekly syndicated newspaper column titled "Talking It Over" from 1995 to 2000, distributed by Creators Syndicate. It focused on her experiences and those of women, children and families she met during her travels around the world.

In 1996, Clinton presented a vision for the children of America in the book ''It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us''. The book made the New York Times Best Seller list and Clinton received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 1997 for the book's audio recording.

Other books released by Clinton when she was First Lady include ''Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets'' (1998) and ''An Invitation to the White House: At Home with History'' (2000). In 2001, she wrote an afterword to the children's book ''Beatrice's Goat''.

In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, ''Living History''. In anticipation of high sales, publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million. The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work, went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication, and was translated into twelve foreign languages. Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

Cultural and political image

Hillary Clinton has frequently been featured in the media and popular culture from a wide spectrum of perspectives. In 1995, ''New York Times'' writer Todd Purdum labeled Clinton "the First Lady as Rorschach test", an assessment echoed at the time by feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan, who said, "Coverage of Hillary Clinton is a massive Rorschach test of the evolution of women in our society." Clinton has often been described in the popular media as a polarizing figure, with some arguing otherwise. James Madison University political science professor Valerie Sulfaro's 2007 study used the American National Election Studies' "feeling thermometer" polls, which measure the degree of opinion about a political figure, to find that such polls during Clinton's First Lady years confirm the "conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure", with the added insight that "affect towards Mrs. Clinton as first lady tended to be very positive or very negative, with a fairly constant one fourth of respondents feeling ambivalent or neutral." University of California, San Diego political science professor Gary Jacobson's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state-by-state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, Clinton had the fourth-largest partisan difference of any senator, with a 50 percentage point difference in approval between New York's Democrats and Republicans.

Northern Illinois University political science professor Barbara Burrell's 2000 study found that Clinton's Gallup poll favorability numbers broke sharply along partisan lines throughout her time as First Lady, with 70 to 90 percent of Democrats typically viewing her favorably while 20 to 40 percent of Republicans did not. University of Wisconsin–Madison political science professor Charles Franklin analyzed her record of favorable versus unfavorable ratings in public opinion polls, and found that there was more variation in them during her First Lady years than her Senate years. The Senate years showed favorable ratings around 50 percent and unfavorable ratings in the mid-40 percent range; Franklin noted that, "This sharp split is, of course, one of the more widely remarked aspects of Sen. Clinton's public image." McGill University professor of history Gil Troy titled his 2006 biography of her ''Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady'', and wrote that after the 1992 campaign, Clinton "was a polarizing figure, with 42 percent [of the public] saying she came closer to their values and lifestyle than previous first ladies and 41 percent disagreeing." Troy further wrote that Hillary Clinton "has been uniquely controversial and contradictory since she first appeared on the national radar screen in 1992" and that she "has alternately fascinated, bedeviled, bewitched, and appalled Americans."

Burrell's study found women consistently rating Clinton more favorably than men by about ten percentage points during her First Lady years. Jacobson's study found a positive correlation across all senators between being women and receiving a partisan-polarized response. Colorado State University communication studies professor Karrin Vasby Anderson describes the First Lady position as a "site" for American womanhood, one ready made for the symbolic negotiation of female identity. In particular, Anderson states there has been a cultural bias towards traditional first ladies and a cultural prohibition against modern first ladies; by the time of Clinton, the First Lady position had become a site of heterogeneity and paradox. Burrell, as well as biographers Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr., note that Clinton achieved her highest approval ratings as First Lady late in 1998, not for professional or political achievements of her own, but for being seen as the victim of her husband's very public infidelity. University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson saw Hillary Clinton as an exemplar of the double bind, who though able to live in a "both-and" world of both career and family, nevertheless "became a surrogate on whom we projected our attitudes about attributes once thought incompatible", leading to her being placed in a variety of no-win situations. Quinnipiac University media studies professor Lisa Burns found press accounts frequently framing Clinton both as an exemplar of the modern professional working mother and as a political interloper interested in usurping power for herself. University of Indianapolis English professor Charlotte Templin found political cartoonists using a variety of stereotypes such as gender reversal, radical feminist as emasculator, and the wife the husband wants to get rid of to portray Hillary Clinton as violating gender norms.

Over fifty books and scholarly works have been written about Hillary Clinton, from many different perspectives. A 2006 survey by ''The New York Observer'' found "a virtual cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton literature", put out by Regnery Publishing and other conservative imprints, with titles such as ''Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House'', ''Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House'', and ''Can She Be Stopped? : Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless ....'' Books praising Clinton did not sell nearly as well (other than the memoirs written by her and her husband). When she ran for Senate in 2000, a number of fundraising groups such as Save Our Senate and the Emergency Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton sprang up to oppose her. Van Natta, Jr., found that Republican and conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters, on a par with Ted Kennedy and the equivalent of Democratic and liberal appeals mentioning Newt Gingrich.

Going into the early stages of her presidential campaign for 2008, a ''Time'' magazine cover showed a large picture of her, with two checkboxes labeled "Love Her", "Hate Her", while ''Mother Jones'' titled its profile of her "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary". Democratic netroots activists consistently rated Clinton very low in polls of their desired candidates, while some conservative figures such as Bruce Bartlett and Christopher Ruddy were declaring a Hillary Clinton presidency not so bad after all and an October 2007 cover of ''The American Conservative'' magazine was titled "The Waning Power of Hillary Hate". By December 2007, communications professor Jamieson observed that there was a large amount of misogyny present about Clinton on the Internet, up to and including Facebook and other sites devoted to depictions reducing Clinton to sexual humiliation. She noted that, in response to widespread comments on Clinton's laugh, that "We know that there's language to condemn female speech that doesn't exist for male speech. We call women's speech shrill and strident. And Hillary Clinton's laugh was being described as a cackle." Use of the "bitch" epithet, which taken place against Clinton going back to her First Lady days and was seen by Karrin Vasby Anderson as a tool of containment against women in American politics, flourished during the campaign, especially on the Internet but via conventional media as well. Following Clinton's "choked up moment" and related incidents before the January 2008 New Hampshire primary, both ''The New York Times'' and ''Newsweek'' found that discussion of gender's role in the campaign had moved into the national political discourse. ''Newsweek'' editor Jon Meacham summed the relationship between Clinton and the American public by saying that the New Hampshire events, "brought an odd truth to light: though Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on the periphery or in the middle of national life for decades ... she is one of the most recognizable but least understood figures in American politics."

Once she became Secretary of State, Clinton's image seemed to dramatically improve among the American public and become one of a respected world figure. She gained consistently high approval ratings (by 2011, the highest of her career except for during the Lewinsky scandal), and her favorable-unfavorable ratings during 2010 were easily the highest of any active, nationally prominent American political figure. She continued to do well in Gallup's most admired man and woman poll; in 2010 she was named the most admired woman by Americans for the ninth straight time and the fifteenth overall.

Awards and honors

Clinton has received many awards and honors during her career from American and international organizations for her activities concerning health, women, and children.

Electoral history

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

Official Biography of First Lady Clinton

{{navboxes |title=Succession and navigation boxes related to Hillary Clinton |state=collapsed |list1=

{{U.S. Secretary box | before= Condoleezza Rice | years= 2009–present | president= Barack Obama | department= Secretary of State}}

}}

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:American female lawyers Category:American feminists Category:American legal scholars Category:American legal writers Category:American memoirists Category:American Methodists Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of French-Canadian descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:Arkansas lawyers Category:Children's rights activists Category:College Republicans Category:Arkansas Democrats Category:Female foreign ministers Category:Female United States presidential candidates Category:Female United States Senators Category:First Ladies and Gentlemen of Arkansas Category:First Ladies of the United States Category:Grammy Award winners Category:New York Democrats Category:Obama Administration cabinet members Category:People from Park Ridge, Illinois Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council Category:United Methodists Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States Secretaries of State Category:United States Senators from New York Category:Wal-Mart people Category:Wellesley College alumni Category:Westchester County, New York politicians Category:Women in New York politics Category:Women members of the Cabinet of the United States Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:Current foreign ministers

af:Hillary Clinton als:Hillary Clinton am:ሂለሪ ሮድሃም ክሊንተን ar:هيلاري كلينتون az:Hillari Klinton bn:হিলারি ক্লিনটন zh-min-nan:Hillary Rodham Clinton be:Хілары Клінтан be-x-old:Гілары Клінтан bcl:Hillary Rodham Clinton bs:Hillary Clinton br:Hillary Clinton bg:Хилъри Клинтън ca:Hillary Rodham Clinton cs:Hillary Clintonová cy:Hillary Rodham Clinton da:Hillary Clinton de:Hillary Clinton et:Hillary Clinton el:Χίλαρι Κλίντον es:Hillary Rodham Clinton eo:Hillary Rodham Clinton eu:Hillary Rodham Clinton fa:هیلاری کلینتون fo:Hillary Clinton fr:Hillary Rodham Clinton ga:Hillary Rodham Clinton gl:Hillary Clinton gu:હિલેરી ક્લિન્ટન ko:힐러리 클린턴 hi:हिलेरी रोढम क्लिंटन hr:Hillary Rodham Clinton io:Hillary Clinton id:Hillary Clinton is:Hillary Clinton it:Hillary Clinton he:הילרי רודהם קלינטון jv:Hillary Clinton ka:ჰილარი კლინტონი kk:Хиллари Клинтон sw:Hillary Rodham Clinton ku:Hillary Clinton la:Hilaria Clinton lv:Hilarija Klintone lb:Hillary Clinton lt:Hillary Clinton hu:Hillary Clinton mk:Хилари Клинтон ml:ഹിലരി ക്ലിന്റൺ mr:हिलरी क्लिंटन arz:هيلارى كلينتون ms:Hillary Rodham Clinton mn:Хиллари Клинтон my:ဟီလာရီ ရော်ဒမ် ကလင်တန် nl:Hillary Clinton ja:ヒラリー・クリントン no:Hillary Clinton nn:Hillary Clinton oc:Hillary Rodham Clinton pnb:ہلری رودہم کلنٹن ps:هيلري کلنټن pl:Hillary Rodham Clinton pt:Hillary Clinton ksh:Hillary Clinton ro:Hillary Rodham Clinton qu:Hillary Clinton ru:Клинтон, Хиллари sq:Hillary Clinton scn:Hillary Clinton simple:Hillary Rodham Clinton sk:Hillary Rodhamová-Clintonová sl:Hillary Clinton so:Hillary Clinton sr:Хилари Клинтон sh:Hillary Clinton fi:Hillary Clinton sv:Hillary Clinton tl:Hillary Clinton ta:இலரி கிளின்டன் tt:Һиллари Клинтон te:హిల్లరీ క్లింటన్ th:ฮิลลารี คลินตัน tr:Hillary Clinton uk:Гілларі Клінтон ug:ھىلاري كلىنتون vi:Hillary Clinton war:Hillary Rodham Clinton wuu:希拉里·克林顿 yi:הילערי ראדהעם קלינטאן yo:Hillary Rodham Clinton zh-yue:希拉莉 bat-smg:Hilarė Klėntuon zh:希拉里·罗德姆·克林顿