When it was reported recently that Huma Abedin was seeking $2 million for a book advance, you probably didn't realize that she was already a major author with five well-reviewed titles to her credit. While none of us can wait for the next one, here are some paperbacks to tide you over in the meantime.*
How to Lose Elections and Influence People
Having successfully helped to lead two failing presidential campaigns, Huma Abedin offers an intimate insider's look at how thought leaders can influence complex organizations from global nonprofits to preschool art committees. In thoughtful, concise language, she shares how heedless overconfidence and blithe disregard for facts and observable trends are assets that can be utilized. This book will empower leaders to implement their foundering visions in the face of opposition from reality.
"Gripping, insightful. A treasure trove to be mined by future leaders in politics and business" - The New York Times
"Familiar and statesmanlike at the same time… revelatory" - The Washington Post
"Sober and concise, chockablock full of practical wisdom" - The Guardian
(Basic, 280 pages, $35)
Dreams From my Father
In this searing and lyrical memoir, Abedin, the daughter of two Muslim immigrants, writes with singing clarity and rapture of her childhood and the odyssey that brought her from humble beginnings in a small city in Michigan to George Washington University, where she studied journalism, to the White House, where she served as an aide to Hillary Clinton. Looming throughout is the figure of her father, Syed Zainul Abedin, a visionary intellectual with whose legacy she sometimes struggled to come to terms amid the confusion and contradictions of a richly lived life.
"Stupendous … Abedin is a major voice in American letters" - The New York Review of Books
"Lyrical, exhilarating, full of enchanting visions … Abedin is at once a romantic, winsomely nostalgic about the past, and a realist, saying a bittersweet goodbye to the mirages of youth" - The New York Times Book Review
"Huma's latest book will (if it's possible!) make you love her even more as she returns once again to writing, her first passion" - Vogue
(Broadway Books, 436 pages, $30)
Living With Danger
More than 400,000 copies of Huma Abedin's books sold worldwide. A Kindle (KDP) Top 10 most-read Author.
"Re. the Chelsea situation I really think it would be better if she hadn't written this. Is there any way we can pull?" - John Podesta, via WikiLeaks
"Most of the pages did not have very much text on them and the pictures that were supposed to be in there were blurry and out of focus. I have read many self-published books, so I know they are a mixed bag, but this one was really unacceptable. I am requesting a full refund" - gryffinmom17, Amazon
"This book was full of shit. nOthing in it is true at all" - CharlieRisky, Amazon
(CreateSpace, 200 pages, $20.)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits
Just how badly do you want to learn more about the woman who knows Hillary Clinton better than anyone, including her husband? Do you want to get up close and personal with the woman who cried when the former secretary of State was forced to carry her own luggage? Do you daydream about getting brunch in Thailand on your fifth straight hungover morning with America's top diplomat? Do you have vivid fantasies of laughter-filled, vodka-fueled evenings in five-star hotels with the most powerful woman in the world?
If your answer to these questions is "Ummm, hello, duh," then this hilarious, touching, and inspirational memoir is the book for you.
"Witty, candid, and at times hilariously bleak, you'll laugh, you'll gasp, you'll cry along with Abedin and Clinton" - The Independent
"So hilarious and stuffed with 'OMG can you believe it, girl?' high-five moments that you'll spend three nights in a row on the couch with Netflix off and a bowl of ice cream laughing yourself into a food coma" - Teen Vogue
"Oddly compelling" - The Catholic Herald
Pls Print
"'All of us face hard choices in our lives,' a famous woman once said,'" writes Huma Abedin at the start of this smart, tough-minded account of the challenges she has faced during her many years as a top aide to Hillary Clinton. This thoughtful and indelibly personal chronicle of more than a decade near the summit of world power is not only a story for our time. It is a story for all time.
"A remarkably potent blend of memoir and policy" - The Washington Post
"Intelligent, informative, compelling … surely the best book to have come out of the State Department since Dean Acheson's memoirs" - The Financial Times
"She must be taking the piss" - The Spectator
(Knopf, 675 pages, $40)
*We're kidding, of course. All of these are fake.