In a survey of the first female presidential nominee based on news reports and several books — including two she wrote — one fact emerges: The more people study her, the less they appear to know.

Mayor Michael Nutter, Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton at the election-eve rally at the Palestra on April 21, 2008.

Bill Clinton admired what he saw, too, Sheehy writes, quoting him: She's the "greatest thing on two legs."

"He … had a vitality that seemed to shoot out of his pores," Clinton writes.

One day in the library, she spotted a "Viking" of a man — tall, reddish-bearded, long-haired. She introduced herself.

At Yale Law School, she grew "staggeringly confident" in her intellect and in her views, Sheehy says.

Upon graduation in 1969, Clinton took a job sliming salmon in Alaska — "preparation for life in Washington," she writes.

Clinton was a Goldwater Republican when she entered Wellesley College. Tacking leftward, she became president of student government and helped banish mandatory prayer from the dining halls.

What's more, writes Gail Sheehy in Hillary's Choice, Clinton internalized her "drillmaster father's" style to develop her own perfectionism. Hugh Rodham's overbearing behavior helped create Clinton's "inner dictator," who would rule her life.

During Clinton's childhood, Bernstein writes, she developed her brains; her "puritan sensibility"; her "chronic impatience" and belief in public service; and, "above all, the balm, beacon, and refuge of religion."

Arkansas' first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is seen in her inaugural ball gown, 1985.

In Living History, Clinton remembers her father as "gruff." In A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Carl Bernstein is less diplomatic: Hugh Rodham "descended into continuous bullying...."

Clinton's mother, Dorothy, was a homemaker who told people her daughter was "born an adult." Clinton's father, Hugh, was reared in Scranton and won a scholarship to Pennsylvania State University as a tight end. After moving to Chicago, he prospered in the textile-supply industry.

Her mother was a Democrat, her father a Republican. Many August days, she'd shoot guns near her paternal grandfather's cabin at Lake Winola, Pa., above Scranton. And, back home, Clinton attended Bible school to support her devout Methodist faith.

Following her pattern of liking cute boys, Clinton, born in October 1947, also was a Paul (McCartney) girl. She was a Cubs fan and a Parcheesi devotee as well, growing up on idyllic Elm Street in white, middle-class Park Ridge, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.

In the early 1960s, Hillary Rodham was president of the Fabian fan club, dedicated to Fabian Forte, the Philadelphia crooner, she writes in her book Living History.

If Clinton beats Republican Donald Trump this fall, it won't be her first time as chief executive.

Hillary Rodham's high school yearbook photo in 1965 in Park Ridge, Ill. Her mom said her daughter was "born an adult."

What follows is a survey of all things Hillary, the person and the political figure, based on books — including two she wrote — and news reports.

Nothing can be fully understood about Hillary Clinton without factoring in her husband. Is their union a coldly forged political partnership or a deeply felt lifelong love?

In her remarkable life, Clinton, 68, has triumphed, and she has suffered. She has absorbed decades of misogyny — "Iron my shirt!" men have yelled to her at speeches. And she has maddened millions with the way she has explained her actions.

People project onto Clinton whom they think she is based on their own prejudice — a human Rorschach test, observers have said.

Analysts say she is: graspingly ambitious, brilliant, thin-skinned, a do-gooder, deceptive, caring, inauthentic, shockingly unself-aware, entitled, bighearted, vindictive, funny, mean, foulmouthed, and dedicated to God.

That's because Clinton is a mass of contradictions.

Biographers and journalists have spent years studying the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, coming away with partial portraits at best.

She'd tell you herself: "I am a very well-known unknown person."

What you don't know about Hillary Clinton is a lot.

Governor for nearly 12 years, Bill Clinton decided to run for president. Problems would develop.

"She spent years on the board of one of the most viciously antilabor employers in the country … and never once spoke up in favor of unions," writes Kathleen Geier, contributor to a collection of essays from The Nation for the book Who is Hillary Clinton? Two Decades of Answers from the Left.

Because "money means almost nothing to Bill," Clinton writes, she became a corporate lawyer for the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, and joined the board of Walmart.

Announcing that she was moving to Arkansas to be with her husband, Hillary Clinton shocked friends. "Why on earth would you throw away your future?" one asked.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, smiles as she interacts with members of Self Employed Women's Association, a non-government organization, in Mumbai, India, on July 18, 2009.

In this Sept. 8, 2012 photo, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, during a pull aside before the official dinner the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Vladivostok, Russia. (AP Photo/Jim Watson, Pool)

In this file photo from Nov. 1, 1992, former President Bill Clinton and current Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., dance on stage during a "Get-Out-The-Vote" rally at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Susan Ragan, File)

Dorothy Rodham, mother of Hillary Clinton, adjusts her daughter's clothing as father Hugh looks on, in a New York Hotel room during the Democratic National Convention, July 1992. (AP Photo/Ron Frehm)

Rosa Parks is seen with Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton, on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in New York, July 14, 1992. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Hillary Clinton is interviewed and photographed in Chicago on March 16, 1992, during the presidential campaign for her husband, Bill Clinton. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)

Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, and their daughter Chelsea applaud as the governor announces his intention to run for president, Oct. 3, 1991 in Little Rock. Roger Clinton, Gov. Clinton's brother, is in the background. (AP Photo/Wesley Hitt)

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary enter the White House Feb. 27, 1979 to attend a dinner honoring the nation's governors. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma)

During the 1992 presidential campaign, America met Hillary Clinton in a 60 Minutes interview in which her husband addressed a reported infidelity with a woman named Gennifer Flowers.

As the camera rolled, Clinton didn't affix her husband with a loving Nancy Reagan gaze, Sheehy writes. Instead, "this was the look of a consigliere sitting vigil over a member of the Family."

Making sure the world understood who she was, Clinton famously said, "I'm not some Tammy Wynette standing by my man." Plaudits and ridicule followed.

"For better or worse, I was outspoken," Clinton writes. People who wanted to fit her into a box — feminist or traditionalist — "would never be satisfied with me as me."

SUSAN WALSH / AP President Bill Clinton thanks Democratic members of the House of Representatives who voted against impeachment and vows to complete his term.

When Bill Clinton was elected, he told the electorate they were buying one Clinton and getting a second free. That didn't sit well with much of America, especially after Hillary Clinton unsuccessfully tried to enact universal health care, alienating Congress with her perceived arrogance.

Problems from Arkansas would vex Clinton as first lady. Her billing records at the Rose firm were subpoenaed as part of the investigation into a Whitewater land deal. The papers disappeared, then months later turned up in the White House.

While Clinton was never found to have committed a crime, suspicions lingered because, Bernstein writes, she hadn't responded in a straightforward manner.

“Human rights are women”s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” Hillary Clinton

When her friend and Arkansas colleague Vince Foster committed suicide in Washington, some conservative writers suggested she had killed him — a falsity that nevertheless revealed the depth of anger toward the first lady.

Despite this, Clinton managed to earn accolades after speaking at the U.N. World Conference in Beijing in 1995: "Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights."

Clinton's most trying time as first lady began when her husband had an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. Bill Clinton had told his wife there was nothing to the allegations.

"I was dumbfounded, heartbroken, and outraged that I'd believed him at all," she writes.

Why did they stay together? "Love persisted," she writes, adding, "He's the most interesting, energizing, and fully alive person I ever met."

ROBERT F. BUKATY / AP New York Gov. George Pataki, left, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, center, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., tour the site of the World Trade Center disaster on Sept. 12, 2001.

Some more cynically believe Clinton elicited a deal from her husband — to move to New York, allowing her to run for Senate in 2000. Elected to two terms, Clinton was a steady force for the people of the Empire State, say Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. in Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

They point to her battle to fund AIDS patients. And they include raves from fellow senators surprised at her "good nature" and how "industrious" and "not judgmental" she was. Even Republican Sen. John McCain praised her, saying she withstood more scrutiny than any recently elected senator and was "always well-prepared" and "conducted herself admirably."

With a view toward running for president one day, she joined the Senate armed services committee to harden her credentials, analysts say.

After Clinton decided to run for president in 2008, her eyes welled up when she beat then-Sen. Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary.

“Everybody else has a margin for error. But I don’t.” Hillary Clinton

When President George W. Bush incorrectly linked Saddam Hussein with alQaeda, he asked Congress to vote for invading Iraq in 2002. Clinton's "aye" is a decision that haunts her.

"I got it wrong … plain and simple," Clinton writes in Hard Choices — a mea culpa that critics charge is years late.

Gerth and Van Natta criticize the "brainiest" U.S. senator for not reading the existing intelligence that showed Bush's error.

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN / AP Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., right, looks at Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., after they arrived for a Democratic debate at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles Jan. 31, 2008.

Many believe the emotional display "humanized" her, Katha Pollitt writes in Who is Hillary Clinton? Middle-aged women, Pollitt says, "see in Hillary a calm and competent multitasker like themselves." They enjoyed her self-deprecating description of herself and her staff as the "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits."

Some said the tears made her look too soft. Others contended that they were a phony display to combat the perception of Clinton's being too hard.

"Everybody else has a margin for error," Clinton concludes. "But I don't."

When Clinton lost the election to Obama, media analysts explained how his message for change overwhelmed hers of experience. Also, he was said to possess a superior fund-raising organization. And Clinton was denigrated for her old bugaboo: conducting her campaign with a sense of entitlement.

She has continued to be hammered, Pollitt writes, absorbing remarks by writers such as syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, who labeled Clinton "a castrating female persona."

PETE SOUZA / AP /The White House Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011.

As Obama's secretary of state, Clinton made the United States a sought-after world partner again, Kim Ghattas says in The Secretary: A Journey With Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power.

No longer "riding on derivative power" from her husband, Ghattas says, Clinton distinguished herself on the world stage, castigating sexual violence in the Congo, lobbying against cookstoves whose black carbon killed Third World women preparing family meals, and speaking out against child marriage in Nicaragua.

As Madame Secretary, Clinton was enjoying a 70 percent approval rating. Her resume as a former senator and cabinet member who spent eight years in the White House helping a president appealed to those who believed she was most qualified to become the country's first female president.

But good feelings didn't last.

WILLIAM REGAN / AP In this Sept. 29, 2014 file photo, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wave to the media as Marc Mezvinsky and Chelsea Clinton pose for photographers with their newborn baby, Charlotte, after the family leaves Manhattan's Lenox Hill hospital in New York.

While Clinton was secretary of state, the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments. Hillary Clinton has been accused of being opaque about the donations. The foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to global health, economic growth, and opportunities for girls and women.

Declining to release speeches she gave to Wall Street players for which she was compensated, Clinton raised suspicions about campaign money she received from businesspeople.

Similarly, Clinton was criticized but exonerated for alleged wrongdoing in the attack Sept. 11, 2012, on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.

And earlier this month, FBI Director James Comey judged her to be "extremely careless" but not criminally culpable for using a private email server as secretary of state.

Many of Clinton's alleged indiscretions begin as minor errors in judgment, then blow up because she is unwilling to fully acknowledge errors, say Gerth and Van Natta.

"Admitting a mistake would arm her enemies and undermine her carefully cultivated image as a ... bright person who yearns only to do good," the authors conclude.

Clinton's problems may explain why she endured a long and bruising primary battle with Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose progressive agenda appealed to voters — many of them millennials — who saw him as a more-authentic alternative to Clinton.

As the campaign has unspooled, Clinton has been revealed to be an unpopular presidential candidate. Just 43percent of Democrats and of people who say they are Democratic-leaning are satisfied with her, according to numbers released last week by the Pew Research Center.

KEVIN LAMARQUE / Pool / AP In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta.

That level of antipathy is rivaled by Trump's 40 percent satisfaction level among Republicans and those leaning Republican. Still, Clinton is able to draw support from ever-increasing numbers of minority voters who say she's on their side. And her government experience, along with her unique standing as a woman who has gone further in American politics than any other, afford Clinton positives that Trump cannot claim.

Ultimately, as people contemplate pulling the lever for Clinton, many are realizing that the more they study her, the less they appear to know.

What's clear about Clinton is that nothing is clear at all.

Writing in Who is Hillary Clinton?, novelist and feminist Erica Jong declares: "It's impossible to glimpse the human being beneath the mask."

Hillary Clinton, say Gerth and Van Natta, "is the most closely observed politician in America — and its most enigmatic."

alubrano@phillynews.com, 215-854-4969, @AlfredLubrano