Fame-to-memoir timeline: September 2008-November 2009 (14 months)
You can’t refudiate Palin’s ability to churn out a page-turner. John McCain’s 2008 running mate skyrocketed the profiles of pitbulls, lipstick and frameless glasses after her September 3 RNC speech that brought down the house. But the biggest star that rose that night was her own, for better or for worse.
A year and change later, she was back in Alaska, neither serving as Vice President nor governor (she’d resigned July of that year). But she sidled back into center stage, thanks to Going Rogue: An American Life, which published on Nov. 17, 2009. She had 432 pages of life experience to share even before Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Haters love to hate on her, but the book was a runaway success; it spent six weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list.