Pretend I'm Not Here: How I Worked with Three Newspaper Icons, One Powerful First Lady, and Still Managed to Dig Myself Out of the Washington Swamp

An accomplished former ghostwriter and book researcher who worked with Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and Hillary Clinton goes behind-the-scenes of the national’s capital to tell the story of how she survived the exciting, but self-important and self-promoting world of the Beltway.

Barbara Feinman Todd has spent a lifetime helping other people tell their stories. In the early 1980s, she worked for Bob Woodward, first as his research assistant in the paper’s investigative unit and, later, as his personal researcher for Veil, his bestselling book about the CIA. Next she helped Carl Bernstein, who was struggling to finish his memoir, Loyalties. She then assisted legendary editor Ben Bradlee on his acclaimed autobiography A Good Life, and she worked with Hillary Clinton on her bestselling It Takes a Village. Feinman Todd’s involvement with Mrs. Clinton made headlines when the First Lady neglected to acknowledge her role in the book’s creation, and later, when a disclosure to Woodward about the Clinton White House appeared in one of his books. These events haunted Feinman Todd for the next two decades until she confronted her past and discovered something startling.

Revealing what it’s like to get into the heads and hearts of some of Washington’s most compelling and powerful figures, Feinman Todd offers authentic portraits that go beyond the carefully polished public personas that are the standard fare of the Washington publicity factory. At its heart, Pretend I’m Not Here is a funny and forthcoming story of a young woman in a male-dominated world trying to find her own voice while eloquently speaking for others.

What is it really like to be the ghost in the machine of Washington power?

• A Ghostwriter’s Memoir: Go inside the process of writing for legends like Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and Ben Bradlee, and see how their stories became intertwined with her own.
• Washington Insider: Experience the self-important, male-dominated world of the D.C. Beltway through the eyes of a young woman trying to make her mark at The Washington Post.
• The Hillary Clinton Controversy: Get the full story behind the headlines of her collaboration with the First Lady on It Takes a Village, a project that ended in public scandal and private fallout.
• Finding Her Voice: A funny, forthcoming, and ultimately powerful story of a woman who spent her life helping others speak, only to discover the importance of telling her own truth.

Barbara Feinman Todd is the founding Journalism Director at Georgetown University, where she teaches in the English Department. Cofounder of the Pearl Project, she coauthored the e-book The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Glamour, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Newsweek, and on NPR. She lives just outside of Washington, D.C.