The Girls in the Van: Covering Hillary - Hardcover

This book is about Hillary's Senate campaign and the controversies surrounding her, but it's also about women in politics, women in journalism and working mothers. I wanted to write a funny, insider's account of a campaign, to evoke what it's like to be on a press van, day after day, with the inside jokes, silly songs, and bad food, hearing the same speeches and developing a camaraderie with other reporters and campaign workers. I also wanted to describe the reality of life as a working mom, and I may have written the only book about politics that also has a chapter on potty training! I tried to show the conflicting roles of loyal worker and devoted mother -- talking to your office by cell phone while you're pushing a stroller, or coming home after a long day at the office to a baby who needs a diaper, a third-grader who needs homework help, dinner that needs to be made, a bath that needs to be given ... and then the phone rings and it's your boss! Women tell me they love this book because it's fun to read and they can relate to it; they also love to give the book as gifts to other women they know, who, like Hillary, are trying to make it in a man's world, whether law or public service or the debating team in high school.

A generation ago, a bestseller called THE BOYS ON THE BUS caused a sensation with an insider's view of reporters on the Nixon-McGovern campaign trail.

Now THE GIRLS IN THE VAN offers a similar behind-the-scenes look at Hillary Clinton's historic Senate run. This funny, breezy chronicle is the ultimate press pass to the day-to-day gossip, political maneuvering, awkward missteps and inside jokes of the election. Veteran Associated Press reporter Beth Harpaz follows Hillary from the moment she dons a black pantsuit and Yankees cap and declares her love for a state where she has never lived, all the way to her historic victory as the only first lady ever to win elective office.

This book is a front-row seat in the press van as Hillary takes a My Fair Lady-style Yiddish lesson, invokes Harriet Tubman thirty times on a tour of thirty black churches, and spends as much time explaining why she kissed Yasir Arafat's wife as she does justifying why she stays married to Bill. Meet Chelsea as she stumps for her mother, the Secret Service agents who drove reporters crazy, and the campaign staffers who live to spin. Learn why the press corps' nickname for Hillary's opponent, Rick Lazio, was "Dick Lonzo," and listen in as the first lady bonds with Buffalo by announcing that she, too, "grew up in a Great Lakes state!" Watch reporters agonize over leads and deadlines, and working mothers in the press corps juggle campaign coverage with family responsibilities like potty-training -- a subject that the author unwittingly ends up discussing with Hillary on the evening news.

From a twelve-seat turboprop plane flying over central New York, to the backseat of a bumpy press bus, THE GIRLS IN THE VAN takes you on an unforgettable trip, with stops at the ladies' room of the Waldorf, a Christmas party at the White House, the garden of the Clintons' Westchester home, and finally, the election night scene where Hillary claimed victory.