Fiona Hill, a nobody to Trump and Putin, saw into them both

Unlike other tell-all authors from the Trump administration, Fiona Hill's new book 'There Is Nothing for You Here' isn't obsessed with the scandalous. Much like her measured but riveting testimony in Trump's first impeachment, the book offers a more sober, and thus perhaps more alarming, portrait of the 45th president.

Fluent in Russian, she often carefully took in the conversations of men who seemed to forget she was there and wrote it all down later, she recalled in an Associated Press interview. "Hey, if I was a guy, you wouldn't be talking like this in front of me," she remembered thinking. "But go ahead. I'm listening."

Hill expected not to be similarly invisible when she later went to work for another world leader, Donald Trump, as his Russia adviser in the White House. She could see inside Putin's head, had co-written an acclaimed book about him, but Trump did not want her counsel, either. He ignored her in meeting after meeting, once mistaking her for a secretary and calling her "darlin'."

Again, though, she was listening. She was reading Trump like she had read Putin.

The result is "There Is Nothing for You Here," her book out last week. Unlike other tell-all authors from the Trump administration, she isn't obsessed with the scandalous. Much like her measured but riveting testimony in Trump's first impeachment, the book offers a more sobr, and thus perhaps more alarming, portrait of the 45th president.