The former First Lady and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, pens another memoir but keeps out the unsanitised version of key events
In a chapter about the women that populated “Hillaryland”, a slightly bombastic term that former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton uses to talk about her days as First Lady in the White House, she makes a telling comment about her life in politics. “The warped thing about friendship in Washington, D.C., is that once you vent to a friend about your troubles, you increase the chances your friend will need to hire a lawyer.”
Hillary Clinton at an event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | Photo Credit: Reuters
That in a nutshell appears to describe not only Clinton’s associations with friends, but also her colleagues in what can only be described as a unique and quite unbelievable life path. It began with a stellar legal career, and led to her often awkward and always controversial run as First Lady of Arkansas and then the U.S., her unsuccessful presidential nomination run against Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of State to President Obama, and her unsuccessful presidential run against Donald Trump in 2016. For each of those periods of her life, there is a memoir: Living History, Hard Choices, What Happened, and her latest, Something Lost, Something Gained. However, it is not always possible to get the unsanitised version of events of what happened, as Clinton writes guardedly about anything she may be held liable for later. Despite all the coverage, and the reams of impeachment documents about Bill Clinton and his sexual misconduct for example, Clinton gives no quarter to those who may want to know, even genuinely, about how she dealt with the accusations.
‘Wisps of faith’
Then U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House in Washington, in 1999. | Photo Credit: AP
At perhaps her most vulnerable, Clinton writes only that when she was holding her marriage together with “wisps of faith”, she knew that her husband was “a good man and a good President”. While one might decry her choices, one cannot question her right to make them is what the book asserts, even as she refers to herself as a “nettlesome conundrum”.
Hillary Clinton at the Women for Women International Luncheon in New York City. | Photo Credit: Reuters
One may not question Clinton’s commitment to feminism, however, and her own contribution to making those “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling”. The best chapters of her book contain passages about women’s empowerment, taking her from working to secure the safety of women after the Taliban takeover, to women suffering the impacts of climate change in Gujarat’s salt pans, to her own uncommon “sisterhood” with other First Ladies like Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York. | Photo Credit: AP
It is also clear that even now, at 76, Clinton isn’t letting any grudges go — not against the Republican party she supported as her father’s daughter, but fought the rest of her life; not against Melania Trump, whom she excoriates for participating in “her husband’s bigotry”; nor about Trump’s election win against her in 2016, which she still believes was stolen, or about the January 6 Capitol Hill riot in 2021.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shake hands after the presidential debate in Hempstead, New York, in 2016. | Photo Credit: AP
While she doesn’t write enough about her relationship with the present challenger to Trump, Kamala Harris, in the book, Clinton makes it clear that her mission is to somehow ensure he does not return to power to unleash an authoritarian future she envisages replete with a “federal abortion ban” and “concentration camps for refugees”.
To that end, Something Lost, Something Gained suggests that no matter who wins on November 5, Clinton intends to “keep marching on,” to recall words from a song from Suffs, the Broadway musical she co-produced in 2022.
Something Lost, Something Gained; Hillary Clinton, Simon & Schuster, ₹799.
Review of Hillary Clinton’s Something Lost, Something Gained: Guarded storytelling
The former First Lady and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, pens another memoir but keeps out the unsanitised version of key events
In a chapter about the women that populated “Hillaryland”, a slightly bombastic term that former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton uses to talk about her days as First Lady in the White House, she makes a telling comment about her life in politics. “The warped thing about friendship in Washington, D.C., is that once you vent to a friend about your troubles, you increase the chances your friend will need to hire a lawyer.”
Hillary Clinton at an event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | Photo Credit: Reuters
That in a nutshell appears to describe not only Clinton’s associations with friends, but also her colleagues in what can only be described as a unique and quite unbelievable life path. It began with a stellar legal career, and led to her often awkward and always controversial run as First Lady of Arkansas and then the U.S., her unsuccessful presidential nomination run against Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of State to President Obama, and her unsuccessful presidential run against Donald Trump in 2016. For each of those periods of her life, there is a memoir: Living History, Hard Choices, What Happened, and her latest, Something Lost, Something Gained. However, it is not always possible to get the unsanitised version of events of what happened, as Clinton writes guardedly about anything she may be held liable for later. Despite all the coverage, and the reams of impeachment documents about Bill Clinton and his sexual misconduct for example, Clinton gives no quarter to those who may want to know, even genuinely, about how she dealt with the accusations.
‘Wisps of faith’
Then U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House in Washington, in 1999. | Photo Credit: AP
At perhaps her most vulnerable, Clinton writes only that when she was holding her marriage together with “wisps of faith”, she knew that her husband was “a good man and a good President”. While one might decry her choices, one cannot question her right to make them is what the book asserts, even as she refers to herself as a “nettlesome conundrum”.
Hillary Clinton at the Women for Women International Luncheon in New York City. | Photo Credit: Reuters
One may not question Clinton’s commitment to feminism, however, and her own contribution to making those “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling”. The best chapters of her book contain passages about women’s empowerment, taking her from working to secure the safety of women after the Taliban takeover, to women suffering the impacts of climate change in Gujarat’s salt pans, to her own uncommon “sisterhood” with other First Ladies like Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York. | Photo Credit: AP
It is also clear that even now, at 76, Clinton isn’t letting any grudges go — not against the Republican party she supported as her father’s daughter, but fought the rest of her life; not against Melania Trump, whom she excoriates for participating in “her husband’s bigotry”; nor about Trump’s election win against her in 2016, which she still believes was stolen, or about the January 6 Capitol Hill riot in 2021.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shake hands after the presidential debate in Hempstead, New York, in 2016. | Photo Credit: AP
While she doesn’t write enough about her relationship with the present challenger to Trump, Kamala Harris, in the book, Clinton makes it clear that her mission is to somehow ensure he does not return to power to unleash an authoritarian future she envisages replete with a “federal abortion ban” and “concentration camps for refugees”.
To that end, Something Lost, Something Gained suggests that no matter who wins on November 5, Clinton intends to “keep marching on,” to recall words from a song from Suffs, the Broadway musical she co-produced in 2022.
Something Lost, Something Gained; Hillary Clinton, Simon & Schuster, ₹799.
Review of Hillary Clinton’s Something Lost, Something Gained: Guarded storytelling
The former First Lady and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, pens another memoir but keeps out the unsanitised version of key events
In a chapter about the women that populated “Hillaryland”, a slightly bombastic term that former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton uses to talk about her days as First Lady in the White House, she makes a telling comment about her life in politics. “The warped thing about friendship in Washington, D.C., is that once you vent to a friend about your troubles, you increase the chances your friend will need to hire a lawyer.”
Hillary Clinton at an event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. | Photo Credit: Reuters
That in a nutshell appears to describe not only Clinton’s associations with friends, but also her colleagues in what can only be described as a unique and quite unbelievable life path. It began with a stellar legal career, and led to her often awkward and always controversial run as First Lady of Arkansas and then the U.S., her unsuccessful presidential nomination run against Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of State to President Obama, and her unsuccessful presidential run against Donald Trump in 2016. For each of those periods of her life, there is a memoir: Living History, Hard Choices, What Happened, and her latest, Something Lost, Something Gained. However, it is not always possible to get the unsanitised version of events of what happened, as Clinton writes guardedly about anything she may be held liable for later. Despite all the coverage, and the reams of impeachment documents about Bill Clinton and his sexual misconduct for example, Clinton gives no quarter to those who may want to know, even genuinely, about how she dealt with the accusations.
‘Wisps of faith’
Then U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House in Washington, in 1999. | Photo Credit: AP
At perhaps her most vulnerable, Clinton writes only that when she was holding her marriage together with “wisps of faith”, she knew that her husband was “a good man and a good President”. While one might decry her choices, one cannot question her right to make them is what the book asserts, even as she refers to herself as a “nettlesome conundrum”.
Hillary Clinton at the Women for Women International Luncheon in New York City. | Photo Credit: Reuters
One may not question Clinton’s commitment to feminism, however, and her own contribution to making those “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling”. The best chapters of her book contain passages about women’s empowerment, taking her from working to secure the safety of women after the Taliban takeover, to women suffering the impacts of climate change in Gujarat’s salt pans, to her own uncommon “sisterhood” with other First Ladies like Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York. | Photo Credit: AP
It is also clear that even now, at 76, Clinton isn’t letting any grudges go — not against the Republican party she supported as her father’s daughter, but fought the rest of her life; not against Melania Trump, whom she excoriates for participating in “her husband’s bigotry”; nor about Trump’s election win against her in 2016, which she still believes was stolen, or about the January 6 Capitol Hill riot in 2021.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shake hands after the presidential debate in Hempstead, New York, in 2016. | Photo Credit: AP
While she doesn’t write enough about her relationship with the present challenger to Trump, Kamala Harris, in the book, Clinton makes it clear that her mission is to somehow ensure he does not return to power to unleash an authoritarian future she envisages replete with a “federal abortion ban” and “concentration camps for refugees”.
To that end, Something Lost, Something Gained suggests that no matter who wins on November 5, Clinton intends to “keep marching on,” to recall words from a song from Suffs, the Broadway musical she co-produced in 2022.
Something Lost, Something Gained; Hillary Clinton, Simon & Schuster, ₹799.
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