Publisher's Description:

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 the same 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 a 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 to ever 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 Yassir 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 the 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.