(FORTUNE Magazine) – For an 11th-grade English homework assignment, a precocious Bill Clinton penned an autobiographical essay. It was an incisive foreshadowing of the man he would become. "I am a living paradox," he wrote, "loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity.... I detest selfishness, but I see it in the mirror every day."

It's a shame that Clinton's latest work, My Life, falls short of his boyhood efforts. The 957-page cinderblock of a tome is filled with mind-numbing detail about things that, frankly, don't much matter. The book crumbles under the pressure of being too many things: a defense of his politics and his presidency, an explanation of--and apology for--moral lapses, and a giant shout-out to everyone who ever supported him.

Even if all the hype has put you off reading the whole book, there are some worthy highlights. FORTUNE's cheat sheet would start at his first date with Hillary at the Yale Art Gallery (pages 181-182). Then head toward page 447 on, where the book suddenly becomes a page-turner, as Clinton guides the country's domestic and foreign agenda while immersed in scandal. That he was able to govern at all is a feat worthy of a B-school case study. Like a good tragedy, though, Clinton's mistakes are always more instructive than his successes. Don't miss pages 773 to 780, where Clinton first tells of his "immoral and foolish" affair with Monica Lewinsky. Surprisingly, he doesn't regard that debacle as his biggest mistake in office; rather, it was deciding to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Whitewater. In all, the critical slams of Clinton's book are a bit harsh. The latter half of My Life is illuminating--at least to those who care to learn even more about the author. --John Simons