Hillary Clinton takes stock of life’s wins and losses in a memoir inspired by a Joni Mitchell lyric

NEW YORK (AP) — At the end of her new memoir, Hillary Clinton offers up what sounds like a far-off wish: “I hope I’m alive to see the United States elect a female president.”

Turns out her book went to the printers a tad too soon. Clinton wrote that sentence before Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, suddenly making that wish feel a whole lot more immediate. It was too late to update the print version of “Something Lost, Something Gained,” which comes out this week, though the audiobook now has an epilogue.

So how does Clinton feel about that wish now?

“Really optimistic,” she says, praising the vice president as a candidate and in particular her recent debate performance. “I think I’m going to be around to see the first woman president!”

Clinton, 76, has written memoirs before – from “Living History” in 2003 up through “What Happened?” in 2017, about the painful loss to Donald Trump that thwarted her own quest to be the first female U.S. president. This latest feels more intimate. Inspired by the song “Both Sides Now” by one of her favorite musicians, Joni Mitchell, the book aims to be a snapshot of how she sees the world now, she says — rather like catching up with her over dinner.

So it goes from the macro – for example, a chapter on how she imagines the years following a Trump re-election, starting with troops patrolling America’s cities – to the micro, describing life as a grandmother or mornings at home with Bill, competing over the Spelling Bee puzzle in The New York Times.

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