Replies

I haven't seen the book.
Does she credit her ghostwriter(s) anywhere in the book?
From CanWest News Service:

Hillary acknowledges ghost writers this time

Doug Camilli

CanWest News Service

Friday, May 30, 2003

So who wrote Hillary's book? That's the question in political circles in the great republic to the south as people await Hillary Clinton's memoir Living History, set to be released by Simon & Schuster on June 9.
Last time she claimed to have written a book, It Takes a Village (1996), there was quite a fuss about ghost writer Barbara Feinman not getting even the usual "thanks for your help" mention in the foreword. (She did, however, get a cheque, said to be $120,000 US)
This new book, according to Internet gossip guy Matt Drudge (www.drudgereport.com) has no fewer than three ghosts, and they are said to be acknowledged and thanked for their assistance and contribution.
Only their bank managers really care, I suppose, but just for the record they are Maryanne Vollers, Lissa Muscatine and Ruby Shamir.

From the San Francisco Chronicle (!):

Hillary's more wonk than writer

David Kipen, Chronicle Book Critic
Thursday, June 12, 2003

Nobody scouring Hillary Clinton's cautious but admirable new memoir for revelations appears to have stuck around for the acknowledgments.
On page 529, Clinton somewhat shockingly identifies her longtime right arm, Lissa Muscatine, as "[r]esponsible for many of the words in my speeches as first lady and in this book."
How's that again? Responsible for many of the words... ...in this book? If somebody else was responsible for many of the words, then what exactly was Clinton responsible for? The pictures? The typesetting? Hiring Lissa Muscatine?
Maybe in a culture where policy assistants routinely ghostwrite not just their bosses' speeches but even their signed op-ed pieces, where lazy pundits ridicule plagiarists for stealing other people's words but seem to think buying other people's words is standard operating procedure, this sort of thing flies.
Certainly, Clinton wouldn't be the first person to staff out part, or even all, of her autobiography. But for anybody still naive enough to consider written language the purest, unfudgeable fingerprint of a human soul, the admission rankles.
Whoever really wrote "Living History," it's not exactly a knock on Clinton to observe that the book reads as if written by a committee...
CLICK HERE for the rest of the article