Heels in the Arena

Jamie Brown Hantman was a high-level White House aide, where she spearheaded work with the U. S. Senate to get two U. S. Supreme Court Justices confirmed. She ran Legislative Affairs for the Department of Justice shortly after 9/11, working with people like Bob Mueller and Ted Olson. And earlier in her career, she spent time on Capitol Hill and on the fabled "K Street." Heels In The Arena takes readers on a sometimes-humorous journey through all of it, including how Jamie made it to that first rung on the ladder, with advice on how to succeed in politics illustrated with pull-back-the-curtain stories from some of the most significant political events of the past few decades.


Heels in the Arena is a personal chronicle, a coming of age story, and a tale of finding bipartisan love in a partisan city. For the young people like Jamie who come to Washington with big dreams and high ideals, it is a guided tour inside the sausage factory.