![]() ![]() Part of the sales pitch for any politician’s fiction is the “realism” conferred by its author’s access to the halls of power. Newt Gingrich’s oeuvre is distinguished by its sheer quantity and its numbingly repetitive jingoism. Less successful politician-novelists include Barbara Boxer, Gary Hart, and Steve Israel former Congressman Peter King stands out from the pack because of the “ execrable” Islamophobia infecting his work, while former Senator Jim Webb’s military romances are memorable for their deeply weird eroticism. The first president to publish a novel was Jimmy Carter, whose deeply researched Revolutionary War saga, The Hornet’s Nest, was apparently pretty good. Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton recently announced her own political thriller, co-authored with the mystery writer Louise Penny, about a secretary of state racing to solve a spate of terrorist attacks. Bill Clinton, collaborating with the novelist James Patterson, released The President Is Missing in 2018 (the plot is self-explanatory) the book received middling reviews but positively flew off shelves (a sequel arrived this month). ![]() ![]() Bored, famous, and perhaps hoping to distract from the inevitable reassessment of their legacies, a couple of ex-presidents and several legislators have tried their hand at fiction over the years. The politician as novelist is certainly nothing new. ![]()
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