Levi Johnston, Covered
Just unveiled, the cover for Levi Johnston’s tell-all about his life with, and without, the Palin family (Touchstone/S&S, Sept 24) is providing a field day for the press (“illogical,” Vanity Fair; ditto, New York magazine; “hilarious,” Salon).
Besides the cover, a hint of the book’s tone came two years ago, in Johnston’s Vanity Fair story, “Me and Mrs. Palin.” But that was followed by an apology in People, which he later disavowed, saying, in a rare burst of insight, “The only thing I wish I wouldn’t have done is put out that apology ’cause it kind of makes me sound like a liar.” Don’t worry, Levi, American memories are notoriously short.
Beating Johnston in the tell-all race to publication is former Palin aide Frank Baileys’s Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years, published by S&S’s Christian imprint, Howard, arriving in just two weeks.
Coming a week before the Johnston tome is journalist Joe McGinniss’s The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (Crown, 9/20). The publisher promises a “a startling and penetrating examination of the illusion and reality of Palin.”