A Woman in Charge
Biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton
A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton is a biography of Hillary Clinton, written by Carl Bernstein and published on June 5, 2007 by Alfred A. Knopf.
Background
Bernstein spent eight years working on the book. He is said to have interviewed around 200 people in connection with his research. He did not receive cooperation from the Clintons for the project.
The existence of the work was first announced by publisher Knopf on April 23, 2007, with a scheduled publication date of June 19, 2007.
A Woman in Charge was released at the same time as another mainstream biography of Clinton, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.'s Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The respective publishers both moved up the release dates of their books with the publication of the Gerth-Van Natta work moved up from August. In the end, A Woman in Charge came out first by three days.
Beyond scheduling, there was some feuding between the publishers. The editor in chief of Little, Brown and Company, which was publishing Her Way, made reference to how Knopf had published Bill Clinton's autobiography My Life and expressed doubt as to how "objective and critical Knopf can be about Hillary when it's also publishing Bill."
Knopf's editor said in response, "The editorial integrity of this (publishing) house speaks for itself.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A Woman in Charge” is biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Woman, Charge and Biography, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27657046. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “A Woman in Charge”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow A Woman in Charge primary sources, A Woman in Charge archive and Woman research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “A Woman in Charge”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “A Woman in Charge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.