Books: Return of the Invasion of the Hillary Bios

As a rule, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani don't hang out together--they were nasty rivals in the New York Senate race until cancer and marital weirdness forced Giuliani out--but right now they find themselves trapped in a peculiarly modern circle of hell: the one inhabited by subjects of tell-all books.

Earlier this month, a biography of the New York City mayor broke some news so startling and ironic that it even had Hillary clucking in sympathy. Rudy!, by investigative reporter Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, reveals that the famous crime buster hails from a family of crooks. Rudy's deceased father Harold was convicted of burglary at 15 and armed robbery at 26; he went on to be a baseball-bat-wielding debt collector for Rudy's uncle Leo D'Avanzo, a "petty mafioso" loan shark. For Giuliani, who may not have known about his father's imprisonment (he won't comment but hasn't disputed Barrett's account), this has been one lousy year so far--which may have moved Hillary to offer him some kind words last week. "Anyone feels empathy toward any person who has their past or their life or their family's life on the front pages. I know a little bit about that."

This week she will find out a little bit more, thanks to the publication of yet another book about the Clinton marriage. State of a Union by Jerry Oppenheimer (the author of tell-alls about Martha Stewart and Rock Hudson) doesn't have a great deal new to tell about the union. Oppenheimer's thesis--that the Clinton marriage was based from the start on an "intellectual blueprint" to win the presidency--is stale. But he has new evidence to support it, including on-the-record stuff from Marla Crider, a onetime Clinton girlfriend who clashed with Hillary in 1974 and has never discussed the situation publicly. And Oppenheimer has uncovered new material about Hillary's family background--an astounding amount, given that close to a dozen biographers have gone down this road before him.

He is the first to trace the Rodhams back to a "raw and sparse" life in Scranton, Pa., where Hillary's grandfather worked 16-hour days in a lace factory and most of his relatives were "exhausted laborers, blistered farmers...drab loners, prudish spinsters, lonely bachelors, and sad drinkers." Her great-uncle George Beale Rodham was "an aberration in a family of underachievers," a second-tier political boss. The author suggests she inherited her skills from him. Other Rodhams ran "a fleabag hotel and a beer-and-gin-joint...in the heart of Scranton's infamous red-light district."

While Hillary's childhood is usually described as solidly middle class, Oppenheimer offers a grim portrait. Hugh Rodham may have driven a Cadillac and owned a home in a white-bread Chicago suburb, he writes, but he was a cheapskate who refused to take care of the place, and his drapery business was a one-man shop with walls stained brown from chewing-tobacco juice. Hillary has her brother Tony to thank for many of these details, since Tony told Oppenheimer about a cousin, Oscar Dowdy, who became the source for them. Dowdy also says that Hillary's mother was given to making anti-Jewish slurs (some about Hillary's grandmother's second husband Max Rosenberg).