Shattered

June 26, 2017
The sprawling narrative from journalists Allen and Pares incorporates multiple unnamed insider sources who agreed to share their firsthand experiences anonymously. A fair amount of straight-up dialogue materializes at key intervals, but the book’s foundation is extensive sections describing the perspectives of the key players in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the factors that contributed to her loss to Donald Trump. Veteran stage actress Farr juggles these elements smoothly, partly because her serious tone and metered pacing resemble the voice of Clinton herself. She also revs up the tension by adding extra weight to her voice in some of the more dramatic parts of the narrative, such as when the campaigners react to public statements made by then FBI director James Comey and—of course—the drawn-out events of election night. Farr helps the authors paint mental pictures for the audience. The threads will come together most clearly for those listeners who are already steeped in political news coverage. A Crown hardcover.

An in-depth dissection of Hillary Clinton's second campaign for the presidency, a failure on many counts--except, of course, that of the popular vote.Why did Clinton, arguably the most capable presidential candidate fielded by any of the parties, not take the White House? The reasons are many, and they combined in a perfect storm. At least that's one takeaway from this readable, endlessly fascinating autopsy by Roll Call columnist Allen and The Hill White House correspondent Parnes, who co-authored HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton (2014). One spoiler was Bernie Sanders, who entered the race somewhat reluctantly as a Democrat. Another was that pesky business of email sent and received from a private server while Clinton was secretary of state, a matter that, Allen and Parnes note, bothered Barack Obama much more than he ever let on: "It was a classic unforced Clinton error, and he couldn't believe that she and the people around her had let it happen." It didn't help that the director of the FBI raised the matter of the email just before the election, a move that could not help but cost her votes. Another was the choice of a vice presidential candidate who had all the personality of a brick, a choice dictated mostly by political calculus. Still another was the rising tide of screw-it populism that saw Donald Trump--the favorite of very few voters, as it turns out--into office and which Bill Clinton, by the authors' account, correctly foretold in looking at the Brexit vote in the U.K. And why didn't Bill, more popular after his presidency than just about any other executive, do more to pitch in and campaign for his wife? In part because, the authors write, Hillary wanted to avoid the perception that she was riding his coattails, while he wanted to keep face-saving distance just in case she lost. A top-notch campaign examination. If, like so many others, you wonder what on earth happened in November 2016, this is all the explanation you need. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 26, 2017
For this insider look at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, veteran political reporters Allen and Parnes offered their sources anonymity in exchange for access; that approach yields a history with plenty of detail, but there are few insights into Clinton herself. Clinton began her campaign as “the candidate to beat” in 2014 and oversaw a collapse that put Donald Trump in the White House. “Loyalty-obsessed Clintonworld,” the sphere of influence around the candidate, guarded access to her so tightly that the candidate “couldn’t figure out why Americans were so angry or how she could bring the country together,” and Allen and Parnes assert that this was largely responsible for creating “a campaign that was miserable even before it started”: nobody was able to tell Clinton that she was “a terrible judge of how her actions could backfire and turn into full-blown scandals” and oblivious to the “massive conflicts of interest” between her public and private roles. The authors say that these flaws, combined with a data-centered approach that missed the surge of populism, led to her loss of key primaries like Michigan in an unexpectedly hard-fought campaign against Bernie Sanders, and derailed what could have been a victory march into a long, joyless slog to humiliating defeat. The insider perspective tunnels into the campaign without really illuminating the personalities involved, the broader context of the electorate, or the eventual winner.