by Huma Abedin
First published 2021
Huma Abedin opens her story as a college intern walking into the White House in 1996, never knowing she would spend the next decades at the center of American politics. The daughter of Indian and Pakistani intellectuals, she grew up between the United States and Saudi Arabia before finding her calling in public service. Abedin takes readers inside crucial moments of recent history: Camp David peace negotiations, Ground Zero after September 11, Barack Obama's inauguration, and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. She navigates the tension between her demanding career and personal life, including her complex marriage to Anthony Weiner and the public scandals that followed. Throughout, her relationship with Clinton anchors the narrative, showing both women through political victories and devastating defeats. Abedin confronts the challenge of living authentically in a world that demands she choose sides, ultimately embracing her identity as someone who can be both American and Muslim, career woman and mother, public figure and private person.
Genres: family-life, historical, gender-studies, feminism, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century, current-affairs
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water, personal-journey
Setting: Camp David, Ground Zero, Saudi Arabia, United States, Washington DC, White House
Period: 1996, 2001, 2009, 2016
544 pages · Hardcover · Scribner