The man who moved in on Sarah Palin

A biographer has been an unwelcome neighbour for the darling of the American right. Now his book is due.

Writer Joe McGinniss at the house he rented next to the Palin family (AP)

For a moment, you almost feel sorry for Sarah Palin. There she was, trying to live a normal family life in Wasilla, Alaska when a bestselling author and would-be biographer rented the house next door. And of one thing she could be certain, whatever book emerged was not going to be flattering.

Joe McGinniss moved in on 22 May last year, setting in motion an electronic circus throughout the summer, as both sides chronicled their impressions of each other via blog and Facebook, and Palin's appearances on the conservative Fox News channel, where she is a regular commentator. Watched by the world's media, husband Todd even put up a 14ft fence to block out the prying eyes of Mr McGinniss.

As publication day approached, a new teaser emerged, a hook-up with the hugely popular Doonesbury cartoon strip. All this week Gary Trudeau, Doonesbury's creator, has had his fictional Fox reporter Roland Hedley leafing through an advance copy, trying to put a positive spin on its most sensational allegations.

And these latter do not disappoint. On 20 September, the fruits of Mr McGinniss's labours will finally be available to all, with the publication of The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. Readers will learn that the real Sarah Palin allegedly had a one-night stand with a black college basketball player (although she is elsewhere said to be a racist), that she used drugs with her husband, that she had an affair with one of her husband's business partners, and that her staple reading is People magazine.

Yesterday, even before publication, the book was roundly panned by a reviewer from The New York Times ("dated and petty", and "too busy being nasty to be lucid", were some of Janet Maslin's comments). Todd Palin himself was even more trenchant, describing the book as "full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears".

But it's hard to retain sympathy for the Palins for long. Throughout her bizarre odyssey from obscure governor of Alaska to Republican mega-star and global celebrity, there has been one constant: her craving for attention.

For months she has been stoking the "will-she, won't she" speculation about a 2012 presidential bid. The world is none the wiser, but she has grown yet more famous (and, of course, ever richer). But the oldest rule of PR is that if you live for the limelight, you cannot be selective about where that limelight falls. And thus it is with The Rogue – it's very title a lift from Going Rogue, Palin's own 2009 autobiography.

In a sense, Mr McGinniss's book is but the latest manifestation of a long American tradition – the biography of a famous person, spiced with sensational "revelations" (usually hearsay, gossip or allegations by unnamed "friends") that is enabled by the tolerant US libel laws and devoured by a relentless celebrity culture.

Kitty Kelley, skewerer of Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, the British royal family and Oprah Winfrey among others, is a prime example of the genus. Another is C. David Heymann, who has made his speciality the Kennedys, especially Bobby and Jackie Kennedy.

Two years ago, Mr Heymann wrote an entire book about an alleged affair between Bobby and his widowed sister-in-law. And did you know that RFK, father of 10 children, was once seen passionately kissing Rudolf Nureyev in a phone booth? True or false, that episode may be found on page 419 of an earlier work, RFK: A Candid Biography.

But Mr McGinniss's track record is more complicated. He became the literary equivalent of a child prodigy when he produced The Selling of the President in 1968, an account of how Richard Nixon was successfully "sold" to US voters. The following year, aged 26, Mr McGinniss found himself atop The New York Times bestseller list. The book remains in print to this day, an acknowledged classic of political reporting.

That was followed by a first (non-fiction) book on Alaska, Going to Extremes, dealing with the state's transformation, and a trilogy of true crime books, all of them turned into television series. In 1993, Mr McGinniss also drank of the inexhaustible celebrity biog fountain that is the Kennedy family, to produce The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy, attracting praise and accusations of plagiarism in equal measure.

In fact his best recent book may have been the most unlikely one. Mr McGinnis is hooked on what Americans call soccer, and in 1999 he published The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, the bitter-sweet adventures of a team from a tiny town in the impoverished Abruzzo region of central Italy that had improbably won promotion to Serie B, the national second division. The book was a smash with football aficionados in Britain and Europe, but made little impact in the US.

He told that tale with his trademark zest and fluency. The problem, however, is that in Italy, entanglement of illusion and reality is part of the package. But the mix is more problematic in a biography of a woman who was candidate for vice-president in 2008, and may now run for the White House herself (her latest self-imposed deadline for a decision is the end of this month).

Does The Rogue make a Palin presidential bid in 2012 more or less likely? In a country where politics, the media and celebrity have fused into a bewildering whole, it is impossible to be sure. But in an odd way, Sarah Palin and Joe McGinniss deserve each other. Both of them know exactly how publicity works.