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The Hunting of Hillary: The Forty-Year Campaign to Destroy Hillary Clinton
The Hunting of Hillary traces how an entire industry of hate, lies, and fear was created to persecute Hillary Clinton for decades and profit from it.
In The Hunting of Hillary, presidential biographer Michael D'Antonio details the years of lies and insults heaped upon Hillary Clinton as she pursued a life devoted to politics and policy. The worst took the form of sexism and misogyny, much of it barely disguised.
A pioneer for women, Clinton was burdened in ways no man ever was. Defined by a right-wing conspiracy, she couldn't declare what was happening lest she be cast as weak and whiny. Nevertheless, she persisted and wouldn't let them define her. As The Hunting of Hillary makes clear, her achievements have been all the more remarkable for the unique opposition she encountered. The 2016 presidential election can only be understood in the context of the primal and primitive response of those who just couldn't imagine that a woman might lead.
For those who seek to understand the experience of the most accomplished woman in American politics, The Hunting of Hillary offers insight. For those who recognized what happened to her, it offers affirmation. And for those who hope to carry Clinton's work into the future, it offers inspiration and instruction.
In The Hunting of Hillary, presidential biographer Michael D'Antonio details the years of lies and insults heaped upon Hillary Clinton as she pursued a life devoted to politics and policy. The worst took the form of sexism and misogyny, much of it barely disguised.
A pioneer for women, Clinton was burdened in ways no man ever was. Defined by a right-wing conspiracy, she couldn't declare what was happening lest she be cast as weak and whiny. Nevertheless, she persisted and wouldn't let them define her. As The Hunting of Hillary makes clear, her achievements have been all the more remarkable for the unique opposition she encountered. The 2016 presidential election can only be understood in the context of the primal and primitive response of those who just couldn't imagine that a woman might lead.
For those who seek to understand the experience of the most accomplished woman in American politics, The Hunting of Hillary offers insight. For those who recognized what happened to her, it offers affirmation. And for those who hope to carry Clinton's work into the future, it offers inspiration and instruction.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published July 28, 2020
60 people are currently reading
484 people want to read
About the author
Michael D'Antonio
37 books93 followersA Pulitzer Prize winning writer of books, articles, and original stories for film, Michael D’Antonio has published more than a dozen books, including Never Enough, a 2015 biography of presidential candidate and billionaire businessman Donald Trump. Described variously as “luminous,” “captivating,” “momentous” and “meticulous” Michael’s work is renowned for its clarity, balance, and thoroughness.
His works a have been noted as “best books of the year” or “editors’ picks” by The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Businessweek, The Chicago Tribune and Publisher’s Weekly. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes, Today, Good Morning, The Morning Show, America, Larry King Live, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Diane Rehm, Coast-to-Coast, and many other programs.
Before becoming a fulltime author, Michael worked as a journalist in New York, Washington, and Maine. He has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Times of London Magazine, Discover, Sports Illustrated, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and many others. He has received numerous awards including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, shared with a team at Newsday that explored the medical, legal, and ethical issues surrounding the Baby Jane Doe case.
In 2016, Michael has became a regular contributor for CNN, both on-air and on their website. His pieces can be read here: http://www.cnn.com/profiles/michael-d...
D’Antonio has been the recipient of the Alicia Patterson Fellowship, the First Amendment Award, and the Humanitas Award for his Showtime film, Crown Heights. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Michael now lives on Long Island with his wife, Toni Raiten-D’Antonio who is a psychotherapist, professor, and author of three acclaimed books.
His works a have been noted as “best books of the year” or “editors’ picks” by The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Businessweek, The Chicago Tribune and Publisher’s Weekly. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes, Today, Good Morning, The Morning Show, America, Larry King Live, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Diane Rehm, Coast-to-Coast, and many other programs.
Before becoming a fulltime author, Michael worked as a journalist in New York, Washington, and Maine. He has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Times of London Magazine, Discover, Sports Illustrated, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and many others. He has received numerous awards including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, shared with a team at Newsday that explored the medical, legal, and ethical issues surrounding the Baby Jane Doe case.
In 2016, Michael has became a regular contributor for CNN, both on-air and on their website. His pieces can be read here: http://www.cnn.com/profiles/michael-d...
D’Antonio has been the recipient of the Alicia Patterson Fellowship, the First Amendment Award, and the Humanitas Award for his Showtime film, Crown Heights. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Michael now lives on Long Island with his wife, Toni Raiten-D’Antonio who is a psychotherapist, professor, and author of three acclaimed books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
March 10, 2020
As the title clearly indicates, this book traces the efforts of various Republican politicians and media moguls over a forty year period to discredit Hillary Clinton. The animosity and vehemence of these attacks and misinformation campaigns, as Michael D'Antonio clearly shows, were informed by overt and covert misogynistic expectations and ideas that continue to plague US society today. For most women, this should be no surprise, and in fact, most of the incidences/scandals covered in this book (e.g. Whitewater, Bill Clinton's affairs and Hillary's responses, the so-called "Pizzagate" conspiracy, and the email controversy) have already been covered in various other monographs, including several books authored by Hillary Clinton. However, what this book does well is contextualize each of these incidences, providing the necessary background information to understand the full import. This contextualization and attention to facts, however, is largely undermined by the author's use of loaded rhetoric to describe Hillary Clinton's enemies, and as a result, I fear that the skeptical reader may find it difficult to accept the author's conclusions. Thus, in the end, it is unlikely that this book will move beyond preaching to the choir and actually change anyone's minds.
I would like to thank the NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I would like to thank the NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
April 1, 2020
I have become deeply engulfed in politics since Trump took over. I am not a fan. I have read many of the anti-Trump books that have come out in the last few years and have also the intelligence reports released such as the Mueller report and various house reports surrounding impeachment. I have surmised that Hillary not only got robbed of the 2016 presidency but was also continually badgered for missteps today would be shrugged off as no biggie. Needless to say I'm a Democrat and agree with the author's point of view about Hillary and her past opponents. She has broken so many barriers as a woman but has not been given the credit she deserves.
I recommend this book to anyone that would like to dive deeper into the political scandals from Hillary's past over the past 40 years.
I appreciate NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
I recommend this book to anyone that would like to dive deeper into the political scandals from Hillary's past over the past 40 years.
I appreciate NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
November 14, 2020
Ok overview of Hillary Clinton’s political life from becoming First Lady of Arkansas to losing the 2016 Presidential election. It’s accurate and easy to read. Best as an introduction to the topic. As a person who knew just about everything, not so interesting. Still well written and informational.
December 17, 2025
I'll admit you could have knocked me over with a feather when Michael D'Antonio found a bad word to say about Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) in one of the final chapters of this book. "She could be stubborn, suspicious, overly calculating, and brusque," he must have typed through gritted teeth.
If you have a moment, scroll through some of the other reviews here. You'll see that one disillusioned user even cynically dismissed "The Hunting of Hillary" as nothing more than a shameless "love letter to Hillary Clinton."
Honestly, she's not wrong.
Still, I'm reminded of a piece of advice HRC often repeats, especially to young women: "take criticism seriously but not personally; your critics can teach you things your friends can't or won't.." She usually goes on to add that unsolicited criticism might usually be motivated by envy, insecurity or "partisanship" (I'm guessing "partisan" haters is more of an HRC-specific thing; your coworker probably isn't throwing shade at your outfit because she cares if you're a Democrat or a Republican) and that you should basically identify the parts of their unsolicited advice that could be useful to you in some way, if any, and discard the petty rest. Easier said than done, of course, but my point here is this: yes, D'Antonio does in fact remind me of the most stalwart, baby boomer Democrats I've ever met on Facebook. He clearly picked his team in the political Hunger Games a long time ago and has stuck with it through thick and thin. That being said, regarding most of his arguments in the book... where is the lie?
As several popular online commentators who shall remain nameless have apparently just noticed, our country is deeply divided by politics and, ...ahem, "culture wars." Despite D'Antonio's bias, he does seem to accurately describe how that division has festered on the Republican/conservative side of the aisle, although he doesn't spend much time exploring how it has also manifested on the other side, so we'll get to that in a bit. In any case it actually kind of disturbed me to read just how much these divisions have been deliberately perpetuated and exploited for political and/or monetary gain by feckless politicians and media pundits who know exactly what they are doing and literally just don't care if they are telling the truth or not as long as you vote for them in November, tune in to their talkshow again tomorrow or click on their next video... this has apparently been going on for *decades!!* To the point that the bar for basic decency in politics has continuously dropped further into the pits of hell with each passing year (at least according to D'Antonio's analysis. Since I'm an aging millennial I'll have to just take the boomer's word for it.)
To be fair, I think most of us have been guilty of contributing to this dynamic at one point or another. I know I have; even as I read this book, I found myself feeling righteous resentment about 2016 all over again (I mean, how exactly does one get over their fav political diva/queen muvva losing the election to an opponent whose supporters sometimes chanted "Trump that bitch?" Btw, i'm sure those supporters felt justified in condemning a woman they saw as literally Cruella de Vil, but imagine what that sounds like to people who don't see HRC that way. Imagine a crowd of people chanting that about your grandma.) Over and over again though, I still had to ask myself "now wait a minute bitch... haven't you also demonized people you disagree with just as much?"
Oh, you bet your sweet ass I have. You should just see some of the things I've said about Bernie Sanders (like that it's possible he could be a surviving Weather Underground member and was too busy kidnapping Patty Hearst in the '70s to realize the revolution wasn't coming and, rather than admit that he was wrong, continues calling women "corrupt" from the passenger side of his best friend's ride today... I know, such awful things for me to say. I hang my head in an appropriate amount of shame.) In case I'm being too hard on the hard left though, I also secretly speculate that Muammar Gaddafi's soul may have invaded Donald Trump's body after his 2011 assassination. Think about it: the former aging president of Libya who seemed to genuinely believe that Botox, black hair dye and gaudy outfits made him look like a strapping young hunk as he gave long, rambling speeches to an audience that was too cowered into submission to tell him to shut tf up died the same year Trump gained political prominence with the Obama birth certificate thing. Coincidence??!!
Honestly, I have to ask... at the end of the day, are we all just broken people with different forms of neurosis trying to hide our desperate need for validation behind "political" theatrics? Are we all Muammar Gaddafi in some way?
I'm actually working on a personal theory about all this, one that occured to me after watching an episode of HRC's Apple TV series "Gutsy" (I know, I can hear some of you groaning in the background like "who even uses the word 'gutsy?'" ... A 78-year-old woman who walks onstage to "Fight Song," that's who. Now pay attention.) In the episode, HRC speaks with a former member of a white nationalist group who makes a lot of good points about the way recruiters from that group exploited her unresolved personal trauma and need for validation. She in fact makes such good points that i've seen HRC go on to cite what she learned from her in multiple interviews.
My personal theory is that this happens across the board. Every identity group in society seems to have its own version of identity politics, with similarly varying levels of extremism present within each group-- MAGA die-hards or people who occasionally read Breitbart or what-have-you are not as deep in the "white identity politics" rabbit hole as people in violent white nationalist groups, even if both are motivated by the same underlying form of identity politics. Just as "conscious" black people who believe misleading statistics about the prevalence of anti-black police shootings and/or that Africans invented literally everything and would be ruling the world right now if not for that meddling white man are generally not as far down the crazy-hole as the BLA militants who set off bombs and killed police officers in the 1970s, just to name one such group.
Of course it's a pretty slippery slope from online zealot to militant extremist for a small number of people, but I nevertheless think it's important to note that there seems to just be a deeply ingrained tribal, "us verses them" tendency in human nature in general, regardless of ethnicity or any other immutable characteristic (how else do you explain people from the same region and ethnic group raping and slaughtering each other over minor differences about religion?) and that this tendency in human nature is easily, predictably and very irresponsibly exploited by all of the sociopaths who are inclined to do so for their own gain.
The book mentions a few times how the phenomenon of white male anxiety about "status loss" helped propel Trump to victory in 2016. I'll admit that my heart kind of dropped the more the author repeated examples of men behaving this way and the more I thought of men I have known irl. Now that I think about it though, I'm kind of dumbfounded that Democrat talking-heads haven't thought to go a step further and point out that "cultural anxiety" is a natural human behavior that appears in every society, not just in white men. (To be fair, I think HRC *tried* to acknowledge this, like when in one of her debates with Trump she tried to both acknowledge the validity of black anxiety about "stop-and-frisk" in New York while also encouraging respect for police. However you can't expect HRC, basically the human version of ChatGPT, to talk candidly about something this divisive.)
Presto, btw: I think I may have just discovered the secret ingredient for a Democrat to win the White House in 2028-- just plainly say what you really think.
Whatever the case, if there is one thing this book does successfully it is capturing the history of the "Republican" side's role in the overall "culture war." The book could have been more nuanced (it could have added context about the troubling tendency of leftists, particularly the most hard-core leftists, to deliberately speak in outrageous hyperbole to justify their positions and inadvertently further contribute to the degradation of truth in American politics and media), but this passage from the book about the Republican side of the move towards disinformation in America is so on the money that it bears quoting in full:
"Among the first of these extremists was a Republican congressman named Newt Gingrich, who, beginning in the 1970s, mainstreamed the vilification of the opposition as 'traitors' and 'thugs' out to 'destroy our country.' In notes he made in the 1970s and 1980s, Gingrich... wrote that his side should 'be willing to be unpopular, uncouth' and 'have no shame.' For example, he thought the GOP should try to exploit 'anti-queer' sentiment in the black community.
In addition to encouraging activists to 'be nasty,' Gingrich turned the old adage that says 'all politics is local' on its head to make all politics national. This approach, which involved transforming the other side's leaders from opponents into enemies, made it easier for voters to form strong bonds with their political team and then join what Gingrich called a 'war for power.'
For a few years, Gingrich was regarded as a sideshow member of Congress, and his speeches reinforced this status. Among the choicest examples was his claim that under Democrats, 'we in America could experience the joys of Soviet-style brutality and murdering of women and children.' He said Speaker of the House Thomas P. 'Tip' O'Neill 'may not understand freedom versus slavery and that in contesting the election results in one congressional district Democrats enabled Nazis. As he used this talk to claim the pure center of the GOP, Gingrich moved from the fringe to a place of influence. By 1985, he would lead a coterie of like-minded House members and declare, 'i'm unavoidable. I represent real power.'"
By the time the Republicans correctly guessed that HRC was the strongest Democratic candidate for 2016, the aforementioned bar had already dropped to the lowest depths of the Inferno and truth mattered even less to politicians and pundits alike than maintaining the political fantasies of heroes and villains that had been reinforced for so many people and for so many years, ultimately culminating in someone like Donald Trump being able to say blatantly untrue things-- like that HRC slept quietly in her bed as the attacks on Benghazi unfolded (she was in fact awake and trying to manage the situation, along with other Obama administration officials) or that she sold uranium to the Russians despite her not having the authority to do any such thing as secretary of state. Maybe Trump truly believes those conspiracies, maybe he doesn't but can care less as long as he gets what he wants, but those were the theories that were put out there by spin-doctors for a reason: to make a political opponent (HRC in this case) seem so detestable and unworthy of compassion that many people felt comfortable chanting things about her (like "Trump that bitch") that they'd never feel comfortable chanting about a person they cared about.
It's pretty easy to imagine this same thing happening in any country, in any culture and any ethic group. In fact it has happened over and over again in such different settings. This book is just the story of one time when it happened in the United States.
If you have a moment, scroll through some of the other reviews here. You'll see that one disillusioned user even cynically dismissed "The Hunting of Hillary" as nothing more than a shameless "love letter to Hillary Clinton."
Honestly, she's not wrong.
Still, I'm reminded of a piece of advice HRC often repeats, especially to young women: "take criticism seriously but not personally; your critics can teach you things your friends can't or won't.." She usually goes on to add that unsolicited criticism might usually be motivated by envy, insecurity or "partisanship" (I'm guessing "partisan" haters is more of an HRC-specific thing; your coworker probably isn't throwing shade at your outfit because she cares if you're a Democrat or a Republican) and that you should basically identify the parts of their unsolicited advice that could be useful to you in some way, if any, and discard the petty rest. Easier said than done, of course, but my point here is this: yes, D'Antonio does in fact remind me of the most stalwart, baby boomer Democrats I've ever met on Facebook. He clearly picked his team in the political Hunger Games a long time ago and has stuck with it through thick and thin. That being said, regarding most of his arguments in the book... where is the lie?
As several popular online commentators who shall remain nameless have apparently just noticed, our country is deeply divided by politics and, ...ahem, "culture wars." Despite D'Antonio's bias, he does seem to accurately describe how that division has festered on the Republican/conservative side of the aisle, although he doesn't spend much time exploring how it has also manifested on the other side, so we'll get to that in a bit. In any case it actually kind of disturbed me to read just how much these divisions have been deliberately perpetuated and exploited for political and/or monetary gain by feckless politicians and media pundits who know exactly what they are doing and literally just don't care if they are telling the truth or not as long as you vote for them in November, tune in to their talkshow again tomorrow or click on their next video... this has apparently been going on for *decades!!* To the point that the bar for basic decency in politics has continuously dropped further into the pits of hell with each passing year (at least according to D'Antonio's analysis. Since I'm an aging millennial I'll have to just take the boomer's word for it.)
To be fair, I think most of us have been guilty of contributing to this dynamic at one point or another. I know I have; even as I read this book, I found myself feeling righteous resentment about 2016 all over again (I mean, how exactly does one get over their fav political diva/queen muvva losing the election to an opponent whose supporters sometimes chanted "Trump that bitch?" Btw, i'm sure those supporters felt justified in condemning a woman they saw as literally Cruella de Vil, but imagine what that sounds like to people who don't see HRC that way. Imagine a crowd of people chanting that about your grandma.) Over and over again though, I still had to ask myself "now wait a minute bitch... haven't you also demonized people you disagree with just as much?"
Oh, you bet your sweet ass I have. You should just see some of the things I've said about Bernie Sanders (like that it's possible he could be a surviving Weather Underground member and was too busy kidnapping Patty Hearst in the '70s to realize the revolution wasn't coming and, rather than admit that he was wrong, continues calling women "corrupt" from the passenger side of his best friend's ride today... I know, such awful things for me to say. I hang my head in an appropriate amount of shame.) In case I'm being too hard on the hard left though, I also secretly speculate that Muammar Gaddafi's soul may have invaded Donald Trump's body after his 2011 assassination. Think about it: the former aging president of Libya who seemed to genuinely believe that Botox, black hair dye and gaudy outfits made him look like a strapping young hunk as he gave long, rambling speeches to an audience that was too cowered into submission to tell him to shut tf up died the same year Trump gained political prominence with the Obama birth certificate thing. Coincidence??!!
Honestly, I have to ask... at the end of the day, are we all just broken people with different forms of neurosis trying to hide our desperate need for validation behind "political" theatrics? Are we all Muammar Gaddafi in some way?
I'm actually working on a personal theory about all this, one that occured to me after watching an episode of HRC's Apple TV series "Gutsy" (I know, I can hear some of you groaning in the background like "who even uses the word 'gutsy?'" ... A 78-year-old woman who walks onstage to "Fight Song," that's who. Now pay attention.) In the episode, HRC speaks with a former member of a white nationalist group who makes a lot of good points about the way recruiters from that group exploited her unresolved personal trauma and need for validation. She in fact makes such good points that i've seen HRC go on to cite what she learned from her in multiple interviews.
My personal theory is that this happens across the board. Every identity group in society seems to have its own version of identity politics, with similarly varying levels of extremism present within each group-- MAGA die-hards or people who occasionally read Breitbart or what-have-you are not as deep in the "white identity politics" rabbit hole as people in violent white nationalist groups, even if both are motivated by the same underlying form of identity politics. Just as "conscious" black people who believe misleading statistics about the prevalence of anti-black police shootings and/or that Africans invented literally everything and would be ruling the world right now if not for that meddling white man are generally not as far down the crazy-hole as the BLA militants who set off bombs and killed police officers in the 1970s, just to name one such group.
Of course it's a pretty slippery slope from online zealot to militant extremist for a small number of people, but I nevertheless think it's important to note that there seems to just be a deeply ingrained tribal, "us verses them" tendency in human nature in general, regardless of ethnicity or any other immutable characteristic (how else do you explain people from the same region and ethnic group raping and slaughtering each other over minor differences about religion?) and that this tendency in human nature is easily, predictably and very irresponsibly exploited by all of the sociopaths who are inclined to do so for their own gain.
The book mentions a few times how the phenomenon of white male anxiety about "status loss" helped propel Trump to victory in 2016. I'll admit that my heart kind of dropped the more the author repeated examples of men behaving this way and the more I thought of men I have known irl. Now that I think about it though, I'm kind of dumbfounded that Democrat talking-heads haven't thought to go a step further and point out that "cultural anxiety" is a natural human behavior that appears in every society, not just in white men. (To be fair, I think HRC *tried* to acknowledge this, like when in one of her debates with Trump she tried to both acknowledge the validity of black anxiety about "stop-and-frisk" in New York while also encouraging respect for police. However you can't expect HRC, basically the human version of ChatGPT, to talk candidly about something this divisive.)
Presto, btw: I think I may have just discovered the secret ingredient for a Democrat to win the White House in 2028-- just plainly say what you really think.
Whatever the case, if there is one thing this book does successfully it is capturing the history of the "Republican" side's role in the overall "culture war." The book could have been more nuanced (it could have added context about the troubling tendency of leftists, particularly the most hard-core leftists, to deliberately speak in outrageous hyperbole to justify their positions and inadvertently further contribute to the degradation of truth in American politics and media), but this passage from the book about the Republican side of the move towards disinformation in America is so on the money that it bears quoting in full:
"Among the first of these extremists was a Republican congressman named Newt Gingrich, who, beginning in the 1970s, mainstreamed the vilification of the opposition as 'traitors' and 'thugs' out to 'destroy our country.' In notes he made in the 1970s and 1980s, Gingrich... wrote that his side should 'be willing to be unpopular, uncouth' and 'have no shame.' For example, he thought the GOP should try to exploit 'anti-queer' sentiment in the black community.
In addition to encouraging activists to 'be nasty,' Gingrich turned the old adage that says 'all politics is local' on its head to make all politics national. This approach, which involved transforming the other side's leaders from opponents into enemies, made it easier for voters to form strong bonds with their political team and then join what Gingrich called a 'war for power.'
For a few years, Gingrich was regarded as a sideshow member of Congress, and his speeches reinforced this status. Among the choicest examples was his claim that under Democrats, 'we in America could experience the joys of Soviet-style brutality and murdering of women and children.' He said Speaker of the House Thomas P. 'Tip' O'Neill 'may not understand freedom versus slavery and that in contesting the election results in one congressional district Democrats enabled Nazis. As he used this talk to claim the pure center of the GOP, Gingrich moved from the fringe to a place of influence. By 1985, he would lead a coterie of like-minded House members and declare, 'i'm unavoidable. I represent real power.'"
By the time the Republicans correctly guessed that HRC was the strongest Democratic candidate for 2016, the aforementioned bar had already dropped to the lowest depths of the Inferno and truth mattered even less to politicians and pundits alike than maintaining the political fantasies of heroes and villains that had been reinforced for so many people and for so many years, ultimately culminating in someone like Donald Trump being able to say blatantly untrue things-- like that HRC slept quietly in her bed as the attacks on Benghazi unfolded (she was in fact awake and trying to manage the situation, along with other Obama administration officials) or that she sold uranium to the Russians despite her not having the authority to do any such thing as secretary of state. Maybe Trump truly believes those conspiracies, maybe he doesn't but can care less as long as he gets what he wants, but those were the theories that were put out there by spin-doctors for a reason: to make a political opponent (HRC in this case) seem so detestable and unworthy of compassion that many people felt comfortable chanting things about her (like "Trump that bitch") that they'd never feel comfortable chanting about a person they cared about.
It's pretty easy to imagine this same thing happening in any country, in any culture and any ethic group. In fact it has happened over and over again in such different settings. This book is just the story of one time when it happened in the United States.
November 28, 2020
Essential reading for women, men, including young men and women just starting to form their opinions about the political process. This is two stories. The first is said in the title and the jacket. Trump and his base didn’t simply take down Hillary with their misogyny and screams of lock her up. She has faced this misogyny, conspiracy theories, being underestimated, feared and vilified her entire adult life.
The other is the story of how the state of politics today isn’t new either. That the erosion of trust of the politic body started with Nixon and Watergate, but turned into the partisan trash pit it is today with the inception of the Newt Gingrich playbook when all respect, decorum and bipartisanship ended.
For any reader with half an open mind, you’ll see the progression of the media’s dedication to confirmation of the truth to the decayed natured of being the first to report *anything* and the formation of more media/propaganda (I don’t call them news on purpose) sources, that more than the average American today is misinformed about what either party truly stands for, what democracy truly is, and worse than that, what the *TRUTH* about anything is.
This book isn’t a pro-Hillary, hate everyone else book. It does debunk a lot of the falsehoods out there about what really happened during Whitewater, Travelgate, Fostergate, Filegate and Benghazi, and it documents where she truly made some mistakes.
It speaks more to the culture we all live in today where we just can’t continue to allow ourselves to be railroaded anymore by partisan nonsense and stalemating, lying and misleading media, social media bullying and sexism.
The other is the story of how the state of politics today isn’t new either. That the erosion of trust of the politic body started with Nixon and Watergate, but turned into the partisan trash pit it is today with the inception of the Newt Gingrich playbook when all respect, decorum and bipartisanship ended.
For any reader with half an open mind, you’ll see the progression of the media’s dedication to confirmation of the truth to the decayed natured of being the first to report *anything* and the formation of more media/propaganda (I don’t call them news on purpose) sources, that more than the average American today is misinformed about what either party truly stands for, what democracy truly is, and worse than that, what the *TRUTH* about anything is.
This book isn’t a pro-Hillary, hate everyone else book. It does debunk a lot of the falsehoods out there about what really happened during Whitewater, Travelgate, Fostergate, Filegate and Benghazi, and it documents where she truly made some mistakes.
It speaks more to the culture we all live in today where we just can’t continue to allow ourselves to be railroaded anymore by partisan nonsense and stalemating, lying and misleading media, social media bullying and sexism.
November 20, 2020
This book provides critical context to what we're experiencing right now. I recommend this book especially for people who were too young to remember the rise of the Clintons.
March 4, 2020
I don’t exactly know what I was expecting with this book. Perhaps a non-bias narrative. This book is basically a love letter to Hillary Clinton. No one is so perfect, especially in politics. The book begins with the bashing of current President Trump. This can be off putting to many readers. There can be a pro Hillary narrative without bashing a current standing president, whether you like him or not. It’s not patriotic. This why we vote and have elections. This book, clearly written by a man, made me ashamed to be a woman at some points. I do not recommend this book. Even if you adore Hillary and all that she has done for our country, this book spreads lies and breeds hate.
April 14, 2020
This book confirms much of what I have suspected all along: that there must have been a concerted effort to "go" after Hillary Clinton. I have read many of the absurd stories promoted by right wing sources and wondered how could anyone believe any of it. Indeed, I have some friends who believe them all. Michael D'Antonio lays out a detailed explanation of all those who have sought to damage Hillary Clinton with their absurd and false claims. The hypocrisy of the right never fails to amaze me!
September 28, 2023
I'll just start by stating my bias right up front. Hillary Clinton is someone who I have admired for a very long time. I volunteered on her 2016 presidential campaign. And I stood in line for several hours to get her autograph and shake her hand a few years back. She is on my list of favorite people ever and is a personal hero and role model of mine. And I have lost friends and severed relationships because they didn't or wouldn't vote for her. So to say that I was in the tank for this book is perhaps not entirely untrue.
But I wanted to go into this and be as objective as possible. After all, just because this book is about Hillary doesn't mean that it is actually a well written book. It could have easily been a political diatribe or screed or full of lies and distortions. But it is not. This is a well written and fully engaging book that goes all through Hillary's career and examines the ways in which she was denigrated and dismissed because she refused to be people's image of the subservient wife and mother. It details the misogyny, sexism and homophobia that fueled the hate against her.
Sometimes this book could be a bit too detailed. And as someone who has done a lot of research into Hillary's career, this could at times feel redundant. And yet, I couldn't put it done. It's so compulsively readable and rage inducing. To see the way that this woman has been dismissed, denigrated and lied about for all these decades is infuriating. And to see the ways in which so many people were all too gleeful to tear down an accomplished successful woman is disheartening and yet not surprising. I both loved and hated this book. And it made me love and appreciate Hillary Clinton all the more. What an amazing life and career she has had. What an inspiration. What a role model. She would have made for an amazing president. And our country is all the worse because she didn't win.
But I wanted to go into this and be as objective as possible. After all, just because this book is about Hillary doesn't mean that it is actually a well written book. It could have easily been a political diatribe or screed or full of lies and distortions. But it is not. This is a well written and fully engaging book that goes all through Hillary's career and examines the ways in which she was denigrated and dismissed because she refused to be people's image of the subservient wife and mother. It details the misogyny, sexism and homophobia that fueled the hate against her.
Sometimes this book could be a bit too detailed. And as someone who has done a lot of research into Hillary's career, this could at times feel redundant. And yet, I couldn't put it done. It's so compulsively readable and rage inducing. To see the way that this woman has been dismissed, denigrated and lied about for all these decades is infuriating. And to see the ways in which so many people were all too gleeful to tear down an accomplished successful woman is disheartening and yet not surprising. I both loved and hated this book. And it made me love and appreciate Hillary Clinton all the more. What an amazing life and career she has had. What an inspiration. What a role model. She would have made for an amazing president. And our country is all the worse because she didn't win.
August 27, 2020
Very well done.
This encompasses more than just Hillary (and Bill) it actually is a great look at the moments events and players on both sides of the aisle that led up to the heated, angry tribalism that exists today. I direct line can be drawn from the political players since as far back as Nixon that created todays atmosphere and it amazing how many people that are in the news today were part of what happened through the entire growth of extreme partisanship.
The stories are dissected and broken down to show the events and facts while never being dry or boring, it was fascinating seeing some of the players Like George Conway and Brett Kavanaugh and the part they played before becoming household names.
I highly Highly recommend no matter what side of the aisle youre on as neither side gets away clean.
This encompasses more than just Hillary (and Bill) it actually is a great look at the moments events and players on both sides of the aisle that led up to the heated, angry tribalism that exists today. I direct line can be drawn from the political players since as far back as Nixon that created todays atmosphere and it amazing how many people that are in the news today were part of what happened through the entire growth of extreme partisanship.
The stories are dissected and broken down to show the events and facts while never being dry or boring, it was fascinating seeing some of the players Like George Conway and Brett Kavanaugh and the part they played before becoming household names.
I highly Highly recommend no matter what side of the aisle youre on as neither side gets away clean.
June 9, 2021
By now I've read a number of books on US politics due to the Trump hump into the presidential history books. A person just wants to understand what makes Americans choose a Trump. It's not the author who caused me to leave the book unfinished. It's just that I've had enough of US politics for a while and need a break.
I've come to admire Hillary Clinton and this is one book that raised my admiration. Perhaps the final chapters of the book wouldn't make a difference for me in any event. I'm already convinced.
It would be such a good book to read for those who actually need to gain better understanding of what it takes to be a professional woman, a woman in politics, a woman in American politics, a woman who would be president.
I hope to read more of D'Antonio's books in the future.
I've come to admire Hillary Clinton and this is one book that raised my admiration. Perhaps the final chapters of the book wouldn't make a difference for me in any event. I'm already convinced.
It would be such a good book to read for those who actually need to gain better understanding of what it takes to be a professional woman, a woman in politics, a woman in American politics, a woman who would be president.
I hope to read more of D'Antonio's books in the future.
May 31, 2024
"With pre-conceived notions about what constitutes proper behavior for a candidate's wife, critics were ready to hate Hillary simply because she deviated from their idea of the norm."
This one statement really sums up this book. I knew the hate campaign for Hillary was long-standing and even more intense since the 2016 election, but I don't think I truly realized how far back and how far reaching the coordinated effort at destroying her really is. As is predictable, the people who truly need to read this book likely won't, but that's okay. Some people are just committed to hating something they've been told to hate.
This one statement really sums up this book. I knew the hate campaign for Hillary was long-standing and even more intense since the 2016 election, but I don't think I truly realized how far back and how far reaching the coordinated effort at destroying her really is. As is predictable, the people who truly need to read this book likely won't, but that's okay. Some people are just committed to hating something they've been told to hate.
October 7, 2020
The title is a reverse physcology play , 33,000 emails containing evidence of murder torture human trafficking and the number 1 virus in the world child trafficking rape murder , the back web is a dark web with blackmail evidence upon each and every one of these filthy satanist spawns, she carries hot sauce for a reason these people are cannibals the most horrific acts of evil that people choose to turn heads or call it conspiracies because the truth is so so bad, hrc clinton foundation huma and weiner (pawn) hussein and michael lavaughn robinson = devil we have it all ~Q #savethechildren
October 12, 2023
This was an interesting concept for a book, but I felt the execution was a bit off. It really felt more like a biography of Clinton's public life, but maybe that's the point - her entire public life was a campaign to destroy her. I'm not sure that I learned anything new reading this book, and it seemed that so much was made of the disinformation that things got repetitive and the truth didn't always seem to be super important (for example, after pages of one controversy, a sentence or two focused on the truth).
September 2, 2024
Just pathetic how they went after her when her husband was President, and went after her looks when she was more intelligent than them. If you ever want to lose faith in humanity and realize how pathetic some people, mostly men, many women (including female idiots saying they would shoot her, and then being killed by their own on a misogynist basis) are, read this book. All I would say is she sometimes craps down the line in just the way she was crapped down the line on. I don't think that's going to be able to break any cycles in the way we need. But this whole thing is just horrific.
October 1, 2020
This book is obviously pro-Hillary to the point that D'Antonio is not critical of Hillary at all. But then that's not really the point of the book. The point of the book is to look at the people and systems that were constantly out to discredit Hillary throughout her career. My timing of listening to it right after RBG died and finishing it the day after the first presidential debate probably made me like it that much more. The book was both infuriating and enlightening.
August 29, 2023
A well-documented book about the many obstacles Hillary Clinton has faced over decades in the public eye. Personal political opinions aside, it's hard to argue that she has not dealt with extreme hatred and misogyny as well as life-changing consequences resulting from the bad behavior of men around her.
It is difficult to understand the hostility and vitriol some people feel for a woman who has committed her life to improving the lives of others, specifically women and children.
It is difficult to understand the hostility and vitriol some people feel for a woman who has committed her life to improving the lives of others, specifically women and children.
August 28, 2020
There's very little here of substance that can't be found elsewhere via the Google; D'Antonio's book feels rushed and like a pre-election cash grab.
It's always been obvious that sexism is largely at the root of the bizarre hate for HC.
Waste of your time, but not an indictment of Clinton...just the author and his lackluster product.
It's always been obvious that sexism is largely at the root of the bizarre hate for HC.
Waste of your time, but not an indictment of Clinton...just the author and his lackluster product.
April 24, 2021
The author and their writing is in-depth but clearly biased. Hillary thoughout the book is depicted both as a victim and manipulative but mainly as a victim of false testimonies. With that said, the scope of the content and it's fair recentness to include the antics of one Donald Trump, makes this an interesting read I liked reading.
April 3, 2022
She survives! She has great hair. She is savvy and she would have made a better president. She has been a victim of her own, of her husband, and of the "vast right wing conspiracy" for most of her life -- and mine. This was a good look at how she testified for 11 plus hours about the Benzgazi thing and outlasted her inquisitors. You got admire her. (I do.) And hate Republican men. (I do.)
August 30, 2024
I purchased after HRC’s standing ovation at the DNC.
This book focused a lot on various scandals and tabloid-like news, which was fine just repetitive and left me wanting more substance or perhaps analysis on why she is so disliked by the right. The author included some of that, it was just piecemeal.
This book focused a lot on various scandals and tabloid-like news, which was fine just repetitive and left me wanting more substance or perhaps analysis on why she is so disliked by the right. The author included some of that, it was just piecemeal.
April 15, 2021
I think I’ve read or heard a lot of what is covered in this book but it’s quite striking to see it pulled together. HRC is far from perfect but the campaign against her all these years is extraordinary. This sums so much of it up for me, “If anything besides anti-immigrant fervor bonded the likes of Conway, Bannon and others who backed Trump, it was hostility toward Hillary Clinton, which was an energizing force so powerful that it spanned continents and moved the afflicted to extreme measures.”
Although there are only a handful, the bits about kavanaugh’s role in persecuting the Clinton’s are particularly infuriating.
Although there are only a handful, the bits about kavanaugh’s role in persecuting the Clinton’s are particularly infuriating.
January 25, 2022
Well written overview of the attacks against Hillary Clinton throughout her political life (and even earlier). Serves as daunting outline and warning for what any outspoken women may face in public office, but also illustrates that resilience conquers.
August 15, 2023
She’s more slippery than a pocketful of pudding. She makes a hornet look cuddly. This book is just biased nonsense and does not give a full perspective.
5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
September 19, 2023
This book needs to be read in small doses because so much of this history is infuriating!!
I’m a big fan of Hillary. the injustice she suffered is unprecedented. And thus the country suffered a loss, when she was not elected president. 😡
I’m a big fan of Hillary. the injustice she suffered is unprecedented. And thus the country suffered a loss, when she was not elected president. 😡
Want to read
September 23, 2020Although an interesting read to many people, this book was too full of gossipy type details about the sexual lives of the Clintons to be of any use for my purposes.
January 18, 2021
This made me cry. So sad what they did to her.
September 2, 2023
3.5 *
It was interesting enough but it also felt like the longest listicle I’ve ever read about all the ways HC has been wronged
It was interesting enough but it also felt like the longest listicle I’ve ever read about all the ways HC has been wronged
February 5, 2025
My childhood makes a lot more sense now. I wish I could give HRC a hug. She stood up for me (and all women) while many of our families tore her down.
May 6, 2025
I very much enjoyed the content of this book; however, I listened to the audiobook, and it was just… rough to get through (for me). I much preferred her memoir that she read herself.
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