It is the book of the week. Edward Klein’s much buzzed-about biography of Hillary Clinton was published on Tuesday. Currently bounding up best-seller lists – it was no. 4 on Amazon the last time I looked – the book had a first printing of 350,000 copies. “The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go To Become President” (Sentinel, 336 pages, $24.95) has been touted as being so packed with unseemly disclosures that it could derail Senator Clinton’s possible bid for the presidency.

Published by Sentinel, the conservative imprint of the Penguin Group, the biography has been compared to “Unfit for Command,” the tome written by a group of Vietnam Swift Boat veterans that many acknowledge seriously hurt John Kerry’s presidential campaign. Mr. Klein, a former managing editor of the New York Times Magazine and “a registered independent” who has written three books about Jackie Kennedy and one called “The Kennedy Curse” (all were best sellers), admits that there are some similarities.

“The Swift Boat book was about character,” he said. “‘The Truth About Hillary’ is also a book about character, a tough but fair look at Hillary Clinton’s character as it became obvious through her actions over the course of her life.” Unlike the authors of the Swift Boat book, however, Mr. Klein said, “I am an experienced journalist. I know how to check my sources. Everything in this book will stand up.”

Mr. Klein said he spent two years working on the book and interviewed nearly 100 people, though many of the quotations come from anonymous sources. When queried about this, Mr. Klein told National Review Online, “Look, no reporter likes to use anonymous sources. But most people are afraid of invoking the wrath of Hillary Clinton, and so they will talk about her only on condition of anonymity.”

The book has stirred up considerable controversy. While praised by columnist Robert Novak for “having a lot of new material “and being “well attributed,” “The Truth About Hillary” already has a passel of critics – not all of them liberals. Dick Morris, who also has a new book about Mrs. Clinton coming out in the fall, has commented, “Personal attacks on Hillary Clinton and her marriage only tend to invigorate her and permit her to characterize all criticism as extreme and personal.” In other words, the very intrusive tone of many anecdotes in the book might allow the senator to play “the victim” – a tactic which, some claim, she used very effectively before and during her Senate campaign.

“This brings up the question of how one deals with a political figure who happens to be a woman,” Mr. Klein said. “Do you hold her up to the same standards as a man or not? Some think you have to put on kid gloves if you are writing about a woman, that you can’t be rough with her, or people will just feel sorry for her. I don’t agree.”

The Clinton camp, not surprisingly, denounced the book the day before it was published. A spokesman for President Clinton called it “trash.” Perhaps even more worrisomely, Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly, dismissed the book, in an early review, as a “clip and paste job, unlikely to change a single mind or a single vote.”

Mr. Klein starts his press tour with an appearance on “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox. So far he has not been booked on any network morning show. “I was interviewed on the morning shows for all my other books, appeared on ‘The View’ and on ‘Dateline,'” he said. “But everyone on the networks passed on this one.”

When I asked Mr. Klein what the most surprising thing was that he found out about Mrs. Clinton, he said, “What I couldn’t get over is that Bill Clinton is still sexually involved with other women, and she is still doing nothing about it.”

And there is lots more in the book like that.

***

According to published reports, Joe Mansueto, the billionaire founder and chairman of Morningstar, an investment research firm based in Chicago, is the probable purchaser of Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing’s Inc. and Fast Company magazines. A late entry into last week’s auction for the business magazines, Mr. Mansueto’s offer is said to be a bit higher than an offer from the Economist Group. Others that were interested in the publications include the Newhouse family’s American City Business Journals, Time Inc., and two Boston-based private equity firms.

It is believed Mr. Mansueto was brought into the deal by Fast Company’s editor in chief, John A. Byrne. Unlike the other bidders, he may keep both magazines operating and in New York. Other bidders intended to close Fast Company, which has been in the red for several years.

Mr. Mansueto, the co-owner of Time Out Chicago, has said he has been interested in publishing since he was a teenage stringer for his Indiana hometown paper. “I’m a magazine junkie,” he has said. He started Morningstar from his one-bedroom apartment in 1984. In an interview in Inc. magazine in 1999, he said that his business mentor was Warren Buffett – though he had met him just once and for only 15 minutes.

Those familiar with the deal say the magazines’ price tag is in the $40 million range. Gruner + Jahr bought both magazines in June 2000 at the very height of the dotcom boom – $200 million for Inc. and Fast Company later that year for $350 million.

With the sale of these magazines, Gruner + Jahr, a division of Bertelsmann, one of the world’s biggest publishing companies, will exit the American market. G + J was never able to replicate in America the success it has had in other parts of the world. Last month the German company sold its women’s magazines – including Family Circle, Parents, and Fitness – to Meredith Corporation for $350 million in what was considered an excellent deal for Meredith.