HICAGO, June 3 - Bill Clinton is back.
The former president kicked off his first book tour on Thursday with a wide-ranging speech here that touched on his great-uncle Buddy, the National Rifle Association, William Butler Yeats and political attacks "that would have blistered the hair off a dog's back."
Mr. Clinton spoke to a hall packed with more than 2,000 booksellers just weeks before the release of his memoir, "My Life," which is to be delivered to bookstores on June 22. Sonny Mehta, editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf, which is publishing the book, said the first printing would be 1.5 million copies. Mr. Mehta called the book "the fullest and most nuanced account of a presidency ever written" and promised that "our author is going to work enthusiastically to assure its success."
If the Chicago speech was any indication, Americans are in for another round of Mr. Clinton's storytelling, homespun philosophy and political insights. But Bush-bashers may be disappointed.
Mr. Clinton was remarkably conciliatory toward the Bush administration, portraying it as trying to find a new political paradigm in a swiftly changing world and gently chiding those who are horrified by the nation's course.
"You shouldn't worry about this," he said. "What's going on has happened before in America, and it should be no particular cause for concern to you."
The closest he came to criticizing President Bush was when he asserted, "Politics is not religion, and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology." That line won the biggest applause of the evening, some of it evidently coming from listeners who were disappointed that he did not take a more critical tone.
Mr. Clinton said he had written his book in longhand, filling about 20 notebooks. He said his editor, Robert Gottlieb, had considerably influenced its contents, at one point telling him he could not write at length about his favorite movie, "High Noon," and at another point asking him, "Did you know any sane people as a child?"
Although he spoke warmly about old political rivals like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich, Mr. Clinton did show a flash of anger when he mentioned Kenneth W. Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated him. He said that while writing about his confrontation with Mr. Starr, he had to take a four-hour break to calm himself.
"I don't spare myself in this book," he was quick to add. "I take on a lot of water for not just the personal but the political mistakes I made."
Mr. Clinton said his book told two sets of stories.
"You could almost look at it as two books," he said. "The first is the story of my life and the story of America and how my life interwove with America's story."
This part, he said, deals with his rural upbringing and political coming of age, with special focus on the 1960's.
"If you look back on the 60's and think there was more good than harm, you're probably a Democrat," he suggested. "If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican."
The second part of the book, Mr. Clinton said, is "almost like a diary of the presidency." He said there was "a lot of policy in it, some will say too much."
"I tell the story as it happened to me," he said. "I want people to understand what it was like to be president."
Once notorious for his lack of discipline, Mr. Clinton did something he said Mr. Mehta had told him not to do: tell stories from his book. Most were from his childhood, including one about a fat and unattractive schoolteacher who told his students that he began every day by looking in the mirror and telling himself, "Vernon, you're beautiful." He joked that some of the Arkansas characters he describes might have come from a novel by Gabriel García Márquez.
"There's a lot of personal stuff, even in the White House years," he said. "I try to tell how this little story is part of America's big story."
Mr. Clinton said his book concluded with reflections on "how I think my philosophy should operate in the post-9/11 world."
"A lot of presidential memoirs are dull and self-serving," he said. "I hope mine is interesting and self-serving."
