Yes, from American Evita to The Very Unofficial Hillary Clinton Coloring Book

Hillary Clinton has been good for the book business.

She’s sold lots of her own books ($10.5-million in royalties from 2000-2007, according to her tax returns), and she has inspired dozens more by her friends and enemies.

At a forum on faith issues in Grantham, Pa., on April 13, 2008, Clinton was asked about her comments that she had felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. She replied that since she was young, she had felt the presence of God many times.

She added, “You know, I am someone who has talked a lot about my life. You know more about my life than you know about nearly anybody else’s, about 60 books’ worth, some of which are, you know, frankly, a little bit off-base.”

She has mentioned the 60-book figure several times before. We wondered if she was right.

We don’t normally rely on Wikipedia as a primary source for PolitiFact because it’s open-to-all-editors approach raises questions about its accuracy, but we found it has the most complete list of Clinton books. It conveniently separates them into volumes by Clinton herself, as well as those that take an anti-Clinton and pro-Clinton approach.

From Clinton herself there is

It Takes a Village

and

Living History,

not to mention her senior honors thesis, “There Is Only the Fight…”: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.” The pro-Clinton books include

The Case for Hillary Clinton

and

Hillary’s Turn: Inside Her Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign.

The anti-Clinton market must be considerably more lucrative because it has four times the pro-Clinton offerings. The anti-Clinton books include

Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House,


Can She be Stopped?

and

Hillary’s Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton’s Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House.

The “mostly neutral” books include Carl Bernstein’s

A Woman in Charge

and Judith Warner’s

Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story.

We also found some intriguing scholarly studies:

The Rhetorical Construction of the Female Politician in Newspapers: How National Newspapers Portrayed Katherine Harris and Hillary Clinton During Controversial Times

and

Hillary Rodham Clinton as ‘Madonna’: The Role of Metaphor and Oxymoron in Image Restoration.

We checked the count on WorldCat.org, an online catalog of books. We only counted books in English, which meant we excluded

Hillary Clinton: die machtigste Frau der Welt,

and we skipped

The Hillary Clinton Voodoo Kit: Stick It to Her, Before She Sticks It to You!

because it sounded more novelty item than literature.

Our WorldCat search came up with 48 books. Wikipedia’s list was more complete: 69 books if you include the scholarly studies, 58 if you don’t.

So Clinton was in the ballpark. We rate her statement True.

By

Bill Adair

PolitiFact founder

April 16, 2008

Truth-o-meter Ruling

True

Statement

Says she is the subject of 60 books.

Context

a forum on faith-related issues at Messiah College in Grantham, Penn.

Speaker/Target

Speaker: Hillary Clinton

Statement Date

April 13, 2008