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Clinton memoir breaks sales recordSenator says she hopes book will help readers make choices
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoir focusing on her White House years as first lady flew off the shelves on its first day of release, and the publisher is already printing more copies. "Living History" sold more copies -- 40,000 --- in its first day of release than any other nonfiction book in Barnes & Noble's history, the company said Tuesday. On Amazon.com, Clinton's book ranked second behind pre-orders for the next Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J.K. Rowling, which is scheduled for release June 21. Publisher Simon and Schuster said nationwide sales were about 200,000 since the book went on sale Monday. Clinton was paid a $2.85 million advance as part of an $8 million deal. The first printing of Clinton's book was 1 million copies, and Simon and Schuster said it has already ordered another 300,000. As part of the media blitz to promote the 528-page book, Clinton has granted some high-profile television interviews, including one Tuesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." Clinton told King she hopes that "if readers get one thought from this book, it is that you have to live your own life and make the choices that are right for you." "Whether you're the only person who listens to your heart and thinks hard about what you should be doing, that's the road you have to take, and that's what I've tried to do in my life." Clinton was asked yet again the persistent question in every interview: Will she run for president? Again, she replied she has "no intention." King reminded the senator she was asked on the show in 1997 whether she would run for senator, and that she said at the time, "absolutely not." "I did not think it was in my future whatsoever," Clinton said Tuesday. But toward the end of the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton, she said people began urging her to consider a Senate run, and she started to believe it would be a good way to continue to work on issues she cared about such as children, women and families. By now saying she does not intend to run for president, Clinton said, "I guess that just proves that you have to only say what you believe, and what I believe is that I have no intention to do that at this time." Clinton acknowledged in the interview that she is a polarizing figure in politics, someone whom many people do not like. "I think there may be some reasons why people don't [like me] that are certainly legitimate, and that's their perfect right to make their own conclusions, but I really do think a lot of it had to do with Bill's agenda," she said. "I'm outspoken, I have strong feelings and opinions, I had always worked, I continued to try to help my husband not only in his campaign, but when he got to the White House," she said. "But at the bottom of it all, there's a very different view about what should be done in this country, and I'm on one side of that, along with my husband." Some of the hottest topics of her time in the White House were left out of the book, including many of the women who made allegations against the president, and her husband's last-minute presidential pardons. On the latter, she said she omitted mention of the controversial pardons because "that's really my husband's story to tell." Nowhere in the book does Clinton mention her husband's admission of a relationship with Gennifer Flowers. Nor does she address the substance of the sexual harassment claim made by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, who said Bill Clinton propositioned her in a Little Rock hotel room when he was governor. The Jones suit was settled in 1998 for $850,000. "All of those things were investigated and looked into," Hillary Clinton said. "I also believe in the continuing right of every person to have a zone of privacy." The senator artfully avoided a question about what she thinks of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, with whom her husband acknowledged having an extramarital affair.
"I think that everybody's privacy in this situation was invaded, and I regret that," she said. The interview ended by King asking Clinton why she cast the lone vote Monday against the confirmation of Assistant U.S. Attorney General Michael Chertoff as a federal appeals court judge. The vote was 88-1 to confirm Chertoff, who was once on the staff of the Senate committee investigating the Whitewater scandal. Clinton said she found him unworthy of the judgeship because of the way the committee treated White House staff members during the probe. "A number of the young people who worked in the White House were, I thought, very badly treated by the Senate staff investigating Whitewater, and a number of those young people were put under tremendous pressure -- legal bills that they had to run up -- and I just didn't think it was handled appropriately or professionally," Clinton said. The vote against him "stood for a lot of what I think was wrong during that period," she said. Clinton will tour across the country to promote the book through August, but advance details are not being released because of security, Simon & Schuster said.
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