She was the presumptive favorite in the 2016 US presidential election. She was also extremely qualified when compared to her inexperienced opponent. Yet, against all odds, she managed to lose to a divisive candidate who won in one of the most astounding victories in American political history. On the night of Nov. 8, 2016, when the results started pouring in, surprise gave way to astonishment as everyone asked the same question: What Happened to Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Everyone seems to have a theory as to why she failed to become the first woman president of the US. But what was going through her mind during that incredible election night? For the first time, Clinton looks back on the election in her book “What Happened.” She tells her side of the story with humor and sincerity and this poignant memoir will interest both her supporters and her detractors.
Clinton never imagined she write a book about the shocking loss, however, it is not a comprehensive account of the 2016 race as “that’s not for me to write, I have too little distance and too great a stake in it,” she writes.
She has chosen to focus on moments from the campaign, on people who inspired her and on the major challenges she has tackled during her nearly four decades in public service.
Despite the broad focus, it is natural that readers will wonder how she felt on the night of the election. Clinton, accompanied by her family and senior staff members, were staying at The Peninsula hotel, just a block away from Trump Tower. “The waiting was excruciating,” she admits. So, she decided to take a nap hoping that when she woke up, things would look better. When she got up, the atmosphere in her suite on the top floor was even gloomier and as the hours went by, the numbers were not getting any better.
“How had this happened? All our models, as well as all the public polls and predictions, gave us an excellent chance at victory. Now it was slipping away. I felt shell-shocked. I hadn’t prepared mentally for this at all. There had been no doomsday scenarios playing out in my head in the final days, no imagining what I might say if I lost. I just didn’t think about it. But now it was real as could be and I was struggling to get my head around it. It was like all the air in the room had been sucked and I could barely breathe.”
She gave her concession speech in a grey-and-purple suit that she intended to wear on her first trip to Washington as president elect. This is one of the many details that shows how Clinton was absolutely not prepared to lose. All her plans revolved around her victory.
Clinton spent the first day after her defeat following these dramatic events and doing very little else. She could not handle people’s kindness, sorrow and bewilderment and their explanations for how she had failed. “Bill and I kept the rest of the world out. I was grateful for the one billionth time that I had a husband who was good company, not just in happy times, but sad ones as well.” The next day, she finally reconnected with people, answering an avalanche of emails and returning phone calls.
Afterwards, she writes, she spent long hours walking with her husband and talking again and again about the unforeseeable loss. She also learned how to be grateful for the hard things. “My task was to be grateful for the humbling experience of losing the presidential election. Humility can be such a painful virtue.”
President Barack Obama played a key role in Clinton’s decision to run for president. He was well aware that his legacy depended, to a large extent, on a Democratic victory in 2016. “He made it clear that he believed that I was our party’s best chance to hold the White House and keep our progress going and he wanted me to move quickly to prepare to run.”
Clinton announced her candidacy in June 2015 and, amidst all the positive comments she received after her speech, she hardly paid attention to American journalist E.J. Dionne’s sharp remark: “Hillary Clinton is making a bet and issuing a challenge. The bet is that voters will pay more attention to what she can do for them than to what her opponents will say about her.”
We all now know that Clinton lost the white working-class vote, Trump garnered their attention with populist rhetoric and an excellent slogan — “Make America Great Again.”
Although Clinton dreams of a future in which women in the public eye will not be judged for how they look but for what they do, when she was campaigning, she always made time for her make-up and to have her hair done. “The few times I’ve gone out in public without makeup, it’s made the news,” she wrote in the book. Clinton even calculated how many hours it took her to have her hair and make-up done during the campaign. It came to 600 hours, which is equivalent to 25 days.
Clinton shares personal details in the book, for example, she tells readers that whenever she was traveling, she never went to sleep without calling her husband. These conversations kept her “grounded and at peace,” she writes, adding: “He’s funny, friendly, unflappable in the face of mishaps and inconveniences and easily delighted by the world…He is fabulous company.”
This book shows Clinton as we have never seen her before — vulnerable, forgiving and humble.
It leaves us all wondering, what will happen next?
Book Review: Hillary Clinton in her own words
Book Review: Hillary Clinton in her own words
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The African Revolution’
- The African Revolution demonstrates that “the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism
Author: RICHARD REID
Africa’s long 19th century was a time of revolutionary ferment and cultural innovation for the continent’s states, societies, and economies.
Yet the period preceding what became known as “the Scramble for Africa” by European powers in the decades leading up to World War I has long been neglected in favor of a Western narrative of colonial rule.
The African Revolution demonstrates that “the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism.
What We Are Reading Today: "Beautiful Ugly"
- Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author. In addition to “Beautiful Ugly,” she has also published “Rock Paper Scissors,” “Sometimes I Lie,” and “His & Hers”
Author: Alice Feeney
“Beautiful Ugly,” released in January, is a novel by British author Alice Feeney.
The story concerns Grady Green, an author, who is on the phone to his wife while she is driving home. During their conversation, he hears the screech of brakes as she spots an object on the road ahead.
Green’s tries to prevent his wife from leaving the car to investigate the object, before she mysteriously disappears.
To cope with his depression and grief, Green travels to an island in search of solace and perhaps a way to restore his life, particularly after losing sleep and his appetite for writing.
On the island, he is shocked to encounter a woman who resembles his missing wife, and the story takes another dramatic turn.
Although the novel has been rated by more than 87,000 users on Goodreads with an average of 3.6 out of 5 stars, some readers found the pace a bit slow.
“It’s a bit of a slow-burn mystery, which I feel is difficult to pull off since it doesn’t keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time,” one of the reviewers commented.
Despite being a work of fiction, another reader found the narrative unreliable and unrealistic, making it difficult to connect the events. Nevertheless, most readers appreciated the author’s writing style and imagination.
“All in all, I don’t hate the book, but there is too much melodrama and theatrical antics for a thriller. Since this is my favorite genre, I tend to be quite particular about how I like these novels to be constructed,” another reader said.
Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author. In addition to “Beautiful Ugly,” she has also published “Rock Paper Scissors,” “Sometimes I Lie,” and “His & Hers.”
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Shooting an Elephant’
- While Orwell’s self-awareness is commendable, some readers may find his portrayal of the Burmese people overly passive, raising questions about perspectives that remain unheard in this narrative
Author: George Orwell
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” relates his experiences of a police officer in Burma who is called on to shoot an aggressive elephant that has broken free from its handler.
However, the essay — first published in 1936, and thought to be autobiographical — quickly turns into a searing indictment of power’s corrosive grip, with the unruly creature becoming a metaphor for the absurdity of empire.
Orwell sets the stage with quiet tension: the heat, the hostile stares of the Burmese, and the weight of his uniform. He is a man trapped — despised by those he governs, yet bound to the system he serves.
When the elephant rampages through a village, the crowd’s expectation becomes a noose around his neck. Orwell’s prose, stripped of sentiment, lays bare the hollowness of authority. He does not pull the trigger out of duty, but out of fear of appearing weak in the eyes of the villagers.
The essay’s brilliance lies in its ruthless self-exposure. Orwell refuses to cast himself as hero or even victim. Instead, he is complicit, a puppet of imperialism, forced to enact its violence in order to maintain the illusion of control.
Yet, one wonders: Does his introspection absolve him, or merely sharpen the hypocrisy? The dying elephant, gasping for air, is not just an animal, but a truth Orwell cannot escape.
Unlike traditional anti-colonial critiques that focus solely on oppression, “Shooting an Elephant” exposes the trap facing the oppressor.
Orwell’s shame is palpable, his confession unflinching. There is no redemption here, only the sickening realization that power does not liberate, but enslaves.
While Orwell’s self-awareness is commendable, some readers may find his portrayal of the Burmese people overly passive, raising questions about perspectives that remain unheard in this narrative.
The elephant falls, but the real tragedy is that no one — not the crowd, the empire, or even Orwell — walks away clean.
The bullet that kills the elephant also shatters the myth of imperial righteousness. And in that destruction, there is a terrible truth: Tyranny corrupts both the oppressed and the oppressor, leaving both bleeding in the dust.
What We Are Reading Today: Republics of Knowledge
Author: Nicola Miller
The rise of nation-states is a hallmark of the modern age, yet we are still untangling how the phenomenon unfolded across the globe. Here, Nicola Miller offers new insights into the process of nation-making through an account of 19th-century Latin America, where, she argues, the identity of nascent republics was molded through previously underappreciated means: the creation and sharing of knowledge.
Drawing evidence from Argentina, Chile, and Peru, Republics of Knowledge traces the histories of these countries from the early 1800s, as they gained independence, to their centennial celebrations in the 20th century.
Miller identifies how public exchange of ideas affected policymaking, the emergence of a collective identity, and more. She finds that instead of defining themselves through language or culture, these new nations united citizens under the promise of widespread access to modern information.
What We Are Reading Today: The Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting
- Focusing on brittle fracture and rock friction, this book will appeal to graduate and research scientists in seismology, physics, geology, geodesy and rock mechanics
Author: Christopher H. Scholz
A massive earthquake hit Myanmar and Thailand recently. Humanitarians are struggling to deliver assistance.
Why do earthquakes happen? “The Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting” offers a study on connections between fault and earthquake mechanics, including fault scaling laws, the nature of fault populations, and how these result from the processes of fault growth and interaction.
Focusing on brittle fracture and rock friction, this book will appeal to graduate and research scientists in seismology, physics, geology, geodesy and rock mechanics.
