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Senator Clinton, how do you do it? With critics crying that you weren't worth the price tag, you scored an $8 million advance for your book Living History. You filled up 562 pages -- delivering more a political mission statement than a humanizing memoir -- and somehow avoided any intimate revelations about your cheating husband. You got yourself a couple of sensible suits, blanketed almost every media outlet available -- curtly deflecting probing personal questions -- and readers still elected you to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. The sweet frosting on a shoe-shaped cake came when conservative political pundit Tucker Carlson boasted that he'd eat his loafers if your book passed the million mark. (You fed him his just desserts.) Now a million and a half copies later, you've shored up publisher Simon & Schuster's trembling bottom line, scored a Grammy nod with the audiobook, earned yourself a nice bit of bank, and escaped with your dignity intact. Today the best-seller lists, tomorrow the world.


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Posted Dec 26, 2003 | Published in issue #743-744 Dec 26, 2003 | Order Article Reprints