Mar 29, 2018
Clinton book provides a new guessing game for Washington
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Axios has learned that the N.Y. Times’ Amy Chozick uses pseudonyms to identify top Clinton aides in her memoir, “Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns and One Intact Ceiling,” out April 24.
Washington's new guessing game: Secrecy about the project has left the main characters (Clinton hands and top Democrats) wondering what their pseudonyms are.
- We're told that only HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham (who published "Game Change") and executive editor Jonathan Jao (who edited “Hillbilly Elegy”) initially knew Chozick had inked the deal in 2014.
- I haven't seen the book, but one reader called it “‘Almost Famous’ meets ‘Game Change'" and "'Julie & Julia' but with politics instead of cooking."
- From Chozick's Author’s Note: "I changed some names and identifying details, and gave lots of people pseudonyms, sometimes to protect the innocent but usually to protect the story — I think having to remember the names of dozens of political operatives who all essentially perform the same purpose is boring."
- One reader told me: “Hillary’s press guys are like a tragicomic Greek chorus.”
