The Seduction of Hillary Rodham[edit]
After the success of The Real Anita Hill, The Free Press paid Brock a $550,000 advance to write a book about Hillary Clinton. The expectation was that it would be a takedown in the style of his writings on Anita Hill and Bill Clinton. The project, however, took a different turn, and the resulting book, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, proved to be largely sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton. Having received a $1 million advance and a tight one-year deadline from Simon & Schuster's then-conservative-focused Free Press subsidiary, Brock was under tremendous pressure to produce another bestseller. However, the book contained no major scoops. In Blinded by the Right (2002), Brock said that he had reached a turning point: he had thoroughly examined charges against the Clintons, could not find any evidence of wrongdoing and did not want to make any more misleading claims. Brock further said that his former friends in right-wing politics shunned him because Seduction did not adequately attack the Clintons. The National Review proposed another theory: since “no liberal source in the world would talk to Brock,” he could not collect the kind of information he was after. NR also maintained that while writing the book, Brock had been “seduced” by Sidney Blumenthal, a prominent champion and friend of the Clinton circle.[12] A political enemy had alleged Brock "decided he liked the style and corrupt politics of the Clintons".[13][14]
When the book came out, it was widely criticized for not breaking any new ground. The Los Angeles Times called it “[e]xhaustive to the point of exhaustion” and “predictably critical but unexpectedly measured, at least in comparison to what Beltway gossips anticipated.”[15] The New York Times said that Brock had “tried to do his subject justice in the broadest sense” but added that “[a]t times he goes too far,” often “echo[ing] her apologists” and “dismiss[ing] or rationaliz[ing] the sometimes powerful evidence that Hillary Rodham Clinton has lied...by invoking a relativism rooted in Republican precedents.
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