{"id":4375,"date":"2016-03-28T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/trump-v-clinton-a-tale-of-2-books\/"},"modified":"2016-03-28T08:00:28","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T15:00:28","slug":"trump-v-clinton-a-tale-of-2-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/trump-v-clinton-a-tale-of-2-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump v. Clinton: A tale of 2 books"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014<\/strong> Donald J. Trump\u2019s first book was a memoir\/manifesto dedicated to a life of big-time negotiating. Hillary Clinton debuted with a call for community involvement in raising the young. Trump was a brash star in New York real estate who agreed to a six-figure contract for \u201cTrump: The Art of the Deal.\u201d For \u201cIt Takes a Village,\u201d then-first lady Clinton accepted no advance and donated most of the royalties to charity.<\/p>\n

Both books were best-sellers that attracted some controversy and helped lead to future releases. But from their opening sentences, \u201cThe Art of the Deal\u201d and \u201cIt Takes a Village\u201d signaled sharply contrasting styles and backgrounds for this year\u2019s top presidential contenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t do it for the money,\u201d Trump announced. \u201cI\u2019ve got enough, much more than I\u2019ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren are not rugged individualists,\u201d Clinton declared. \u201cThey depend on the adults they know and on thousands more who make decisions every day that affect their well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s proliferating brand includes more than a dozen business and policy books, most recently last fall\u2019s \u201cCrippled America.\u201d But the signature work of the Republican front-runner remains \u201cThe Art of the Deal,\u201d which, ironically, wasn\u2019t his idea. Published in 1987, \u201cThe Art of the Deal\u201d was initiated by S.I. Newhouse of Conde Nast, which then owned Random House. Newhouse was anxious for a hit that could tap the readership of Lee Iacocca\u2019s best-selling \u201cIacocca: An Autobiography\u201d and believed Trump a strong candidate.<\/p>\n

Trump agreed to a six-figure deal, according to \u201cThe Art of the Deal\u201d editor Peter Osnos.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump … loved the idea of a book that would tell his story and make a big splash,\u201d says Osnos, now editor at large for the Perseus Books Group imprint he founded, PublicAffairs.<\/p>\n

Clinton thought of \u201cIt Takes a Village\u201d soon after the 1994 midterm elections, when Republicans captured both the House of Representatives and the Senate and the first lady was blamed in part for her failed effort to overhaul the health care system.<\/p>\n

In her million-selling memoir \u201cLiving History,\u201d published in 2003, Clinton noted that the election was \u201chelpful\u201d to her because it sharpened her \u201cfocus on positive ways to respond to right-wing diatribes.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had written a Newsweek article critical of Republicans who wanted to place poor children in orphanages and she was ready to take on a more \u201cambitious\u201d project.<\/p>\n

For her publisher, Clinton chose Simon & Schuster. Her editor was Rebecca Saletan, who called the book a \u201clabor of love\u201d for the first lady, \u201csomething she worked really hard at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Clinton and Trump would face questions about their involvement in their books. After Trump said during a debate last fall that he \u201cwrote \u2018The Art of the Deal,\u2019\u201d co-author Tony Schwartz tweeted, \u201cI wrote The Art of the Deal. Donald Trump read it.\u201d Osnos believes the truth is somewhere in between, describing the editorial process as one for which the \u201cgears ran smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n

For \u201cIt Takes a Village,\u201d the announced plan was for Georgetown University journalism professor Barbara Feinman to write the book, based on interviews with Clinton. But Feinman got angry when her name did not appear on the acknowledgements page \u2014 Clinton didn\u2019t cite any individual, explaining that she feared omitting someone \u2014 leading to ongoing questions about the book\u2019s authorship. Saletan recalls that numerous people assisted, with Clinton having the final say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t at all remember it being planned to be an \u2018as told to\u2019 \u2014 and looking back on the process and Hillary\u2019s deep involvement, I can\u2019t imagine that that was anyone\u2019s plan,\u201d says Saletan, now vice president and editorial director of Riverhead Books.<\/p>\n

Trump has mentioned \u201cThe Art of the Deal\u201d countless times on the campaign trail and boasts that it is the best-selling business book of all time \u2014 a claim that\u2019s been widely disputed. It did spend just under a year on The New York Times\u2019 nonfiction best-seller list and helped establish him as a national celebrity. His presidential candidacy has revived interest in the book, which currently ranks in the top 200 on Alpha XR.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt Takes a Village\u201d spent several months on the Times\u2019 list in 1996 even as conservatives such as Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas countered that \u201cit takes a family\u201d to raise a child and Clinton\u2019s promotional tour was sidetracked by questions over her involvement in the Whitewater and White House travel office controversies (neither of which resulted in any charges against her).<\/p>\n

In \u201cLiving History,\u201d she remembered arriving for a planned speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, and learning that Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr had issued a subpoena for her to appear at a grand jury looking into the \u201cTravelgate\u201d scandal. Clinton testified in Washington the following week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was out in the hallway during one of three breaks when a juror walked over and asked if I would sign his copy of \u2018It Takes a Village,\u2019\u201d wrote Clinton, adding that she agreed to do so after her attorney, standing next to her, signaled his approval.<\/p>\n

\u201cI later learned that after an investigation into this \u2018incident,\u2019 the juror was dismissed from the panel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Donald J. Trump\u2019s first book was a memoir\/manifesto dedicated to a life of big-time negotiating. Hillary Clinton debuted with a call for community involvement in raising the young. Trump was a brash star in New York real estate who agreed to a six-figure contract for \u201cTrump: The Art of the Deal.\u201d For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":4376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4375"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}