Hillary Clinton's New Memoir Defaced at Strand Book Store View Full Caption

UNION SQUARE — Book vandals are targeting Hillary Clinton’s newest memoir at Strand Book Store by slicing out her autograph from signed, first-edition copies, the manager said.

Thirteen signed, first-edition copies of “Hard Choices” — which details the former first lady’s tenure as secretary of state — have been defaced so far, marketing manager Brianne Sperber said.

In some copies, the entire page has been removed, while in other copies the culprits — who the store believes to be two men — only cut out Clinton’s signature, Sperber said. All the tears were clean, Sperber said, as if the men used a knife.

“It’s very weird,” she said. “This never happens. We’ve never had anyone just come in and tear out the signature page.”

Sperber said the store is not sure when the book damaging started, but believes it began about a week or two ago.

The most recent incident took place on Sunday at around 7:26 p.m., she said. Sperber said security cameras caught two culprits the store believes defaced the books that day, but staff were not able to confront the men before they left.

Strand has not filed a police report, Sperber said, but printed out screenshots of the security footage and asked staff to keep an eye out for the men. She said the store plans to call the police if the men in the video are spotted inside the store again.

Sperber said the signed first editions “would have eventually been valuable” but did not know why the vandals chose to deface Clinton’s book specifically. No other books have been damaged, she said.

“Why would someone go to her book and rip out her signature versus any other book that has a signed page?” she said.

The bookstore is selling the damaged hardcovers at $12.95 each, less than half the cost of the undamaged signed copies, which cost $35, Sperber said.