The ’08 presidential campaign may seem like old news, but a new book that examines it in depth is dominating headlines and is currently #1 on both Amazon and B&N.com sales rankings.

Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, releasing today, has been featured on Sixty Minutes, The View, as well as in countless news stories. A section about the Edwards’ campaign is excerpted in NY mag under the headline, “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster.”

Fox News delineates the “juicy bits” that have “rocked Washington despite arriving on the shelves months after a number of other campaign 2008 retellings.” Among the allegations are that Bill Clinton was having an affair during his wife’s campaign; Elizabeth Edwards was an “abusive, paranoid, condescending crazy woman;” and further evidence that Sara Palin lacked basic knowledge about world events.

Of course, the book caused Harry Reid to apologize about comments he made about Obama. Last night, Stephen Colbert commented on that issue (John Heilemann, coauthor of Game Change will appear on his show tomorrow).

In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews the book, saying that the authors use the technique pioneered by Bob Woodward, “relying heavily on ‘deep background’ interviews, along with e-mail messages, memorandums and other forms of documentation to create a novelistic narrative that often reflects the views of the authors’ most cooperative or voluble sources.” However, she notes, “Unlike Mr. Woodward’s last two books this volume has no source notes at the end.”

On Good Morning America yesterday, George Stephanopoulos questioned the authors about their sources and why many of these stories have not come out before (the video is not embeddable; view it here).

HarperCollins has already increased the print run twice, from 75,000 to 135,000,and then to 155,000, according to the AP. Libraries are showing heavy holds on moderate ordering; an average of 10:1 in the libraries we checked.

Below, the women of The View discuss the book with coauthor Mark Halperin:

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Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime John Heilemann, Mark Halperin Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061733636 / 9780061733635

HarperLuxe; 9780061945991; $27.99

eBook downloadable from OverDrive

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 8:49 am and is filed under 2010/11 - Winter/Spring, Politics and Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.