Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes

In Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, Jonathan Allen offers an intimate and insightful look into one of the most tumultuous election campaigns in U.S. history with Hillary Clinton at the helm. Drawing from exclusive interviews with insiders, the book shines a light on the Clinton campaign’s mistakes, the internal rivalries, the misjudgment of political dynamics, and the small happenings that quickly snowballed into something much larger that had a lasting impact on the long and ultimately doomed campaign.

The book dives headfirst into the high-stakes world of politics, exploring how the Clinton campaign team failed in their task of translating their campaign strategy into actionable tactics. From her inability to reach certain voter segments, to her lack of command of key messaging, Clinton’s missteps and the teams’ mistakes prove to be a catalyst to their own downfall. Despite breaking fundraising records and having a more organized ground game than Trump, Clinton’s “victory was supposed to be preordained.” Allen takes the reader into a whirlwind of events that illustrates how this is far from the case.

The book examines in detail how the Clinton campaign failed in large part by failing to observe and learn from Trump’s upstart presence as a viable candidate. The failure to separate Trump as something more than a joke and a pundit-provocateur was a key misstep in the campaign from their perspective. As the political landscape shifted, Clinton and her team became complacent and unconcerned about the magnitude of his base and the size of his rally crowds.

Allen paints a vivid picture of the chaos and unforeseen events that plagued the Clinton campaign. From the chaotic “birther” narrative, to new issues and subplots that dogged the campaign in its last months, such as Wikileaks, the FBI resurrecting the email scandal, and the Russian collusion allegations, the book reveals the intense pressure that weighed on the Clinton campaign. Allen lays out how the weighted expectations, their own internal struggles and beleaguered infrastructure overwhelmed the campaign, leading to an untimely defeat.

In the book, Allen takes readers inside the behind-the-scenes action, showing how staffers and campaign aides worked tirelessly to make sense of developments—and protect a candidate battling unique, gender-specific attacks. Ultimately, despite their best efforts, Clinton’s team failed to craft a clear campaign message and, in some cases, took advice from the wrong sources. Allen reveals how even convincing key party leaders, in the form of endorsements, failed to yield the desired result and the election was ultimately lost.

Ultimately, Shattered was described by critics and reviews as an impressive look into the inner workings of a heavily scrutinized campaign, one that at times felt like an exercise in real-time damage control. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intricacies of election campaigns, the power of the media, and how a candidate can be deeply affected by any misstep or unnoticed event. It is an insightful, if not heartbreaking, look at the Clinton campaign and her quest for the highest office in America.