Shattered

I was so excited to read Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes' new book, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign. I followed the stunning 2016 election closely, and couldn't believe the daily twists and turns. I couldn't wait to get an inside look at Hillary Clinton's campaign. The media kept telling us she would win and never predicted the upset of the century, and I thought this book might give some more insight into the Clinton campaign and how and why it failed so badly. The back cover says:

"#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the riveting story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself.

Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors' deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered offers an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders.

Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign's difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016."

I came into reading this book as a non-supporter of Clinton. I didn't support Clinton in the slightest during the election and was terrified at the thought of her as President, but didn't see a way that anyone but her could win. I watched, stunned, on election night as all of the mainstream media's predictions went up in smoke and Donald Trump crashed through everyone's expectations. Regardless of whether you were a Clinton supporter, Trump supporter, or supported neither of them, it was a history-making night no one will ever forget. I feared the book would simply be a blame-Trump-blame-Comey shill piece that painted Hillary in a positive, yet beleaguered, light. However, it was very evenhanded and detached. The facts were reported, even and especially the ones that made Hillary and her camp look bad, and opinions were largely left out. I appreciated this newsy style of writing that allowed the reader to draw their own conclusions. My only complaint about Shattered was that it glossed over a few of the hugest issues that I really wanted to know more about, namely Hillary's health and her demeanor and behavior on Election Night. There have been reports she had an epic temper tantrum on Election Night and I was hoping this book would either confirm or deny that story and bring in more details about her reactions and demeanor. However, this was an excellent book that I couldn't put down. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in politics, regardless which end of the spectrum you fall on.

I received a copy of this book from Blogging For Books in order to provide an honest and unbiased review. All opinions are my own.