Rough Edges: My Unlikely Road from Welfare to Washington

As one of the leading members of the House Judiciary Committee that impeached President Bill Clinton, JamesRogan's place in the pantheon of conservative heroes remains secure.But that is just part of an amazing life story that contains more drama than found in ten lives.

Born to a single mother - a cocktail waitress and convicted felon on welfare - Rogan grew up without knowing his father who abandoned him before his birth.

After a rough-and-tumble childhood in San Francisco's hardscrabble Mission District, he was expelled from high school, became a bartender on Hollywood's Sunset Strip and in a Hells Angels biker bar, and worked as a porn theater bouncer.

Along the way he met a young Arkansas lawyer and politician who advised him to study law and become a member of a different kind of bar.

In time, Rogan scrapped his way through college and law school, became a gang murder DA in Los Angeles prosecuting Crips and Bloods, and then became a state court judge, majority leader of his state legislature, and finally won a seat in the US House of Representatives from Southern California.

In 1998, as a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, he found himself helping to lead the impeachment of the President of the United States, Bill Clinton - the same Arkansas lawyer who advised him to go into law and politics two decades earlier.

Rough Edges is chock-full of wild tales, humor, and fun. Rogan tells an engaging story that will make you laugh and cry, and is perhaps the most honest political memoir ever written. Includes a 16-page B&W photo insert.