place and doing all these interviews. you are keeping a pretty frenetic pace but i have to ask you the first time i read this book it and i've read it several times i was struck by a lightheartedness. it's a serious book that deals with serious issues but there is a lighter side that comes through. so i'm wondering as i've watched you in these first four days and you have had some tough interviews you seem like you are having a really good time. >> lissa i am having a good time and i think that is in part due to the enthusiasm that i have experienced as i traveled around in these last couple of days. it's a great feeling to have written a book about four years that were consequential in my view and we can talk about that more but which for me were both a personal journey and a very heavy responsibility. what i tried to do in the book was to ride it so that i could

give you the readers a bit of a peek behind the curtain because the headlines certainly tell some of the story but not all of the story. it's more difficult to even get information about the so-called trendlines. i wanted to combine both in the hardest part for me about writing this book was that it was believe it or not three times longer when i first finished it. i wanted to put every funny story, every bizarre meal i mean whatever i could remember and wanted to share and the publisher did say you have got to cut two-thirds of this book. and so i worked hard to keep the combination of seriousness because obviously there's a lot of that but also the human side. not just me but what i saw and learned as i traveled around the world. >> you have never been shy about your opinions but it does seem to me you are free to speak your mind these days.

>> i think that's true from some of their reactions that i've had over the last few days. [laughter] i say in the book that maybe it's just the wonderful wealth of experience that i now have. maybe it's because i am totally done with being really careful about what to say because somebody might think this instead of that. it's just gets too exhausting and frustrating and it seems a whole lot easier to put it out there and hope people get used to it whether you agree with that or not, to know exactly where i'm coming from and what i think and what i feel. i really believe that is missing in both their government dialogue and of course many of you are somehow associated in some way of our government and

certainly in our political dialogue. there are so many big issues and i talk about some of them both internationally and nationally. i don't think we gain by either shouting matches or finger-pointing or biting one's tongue. i think we really need to have a very open straightforward come come -- conversation and maybe in trying to model that i don't know but that's how it feels to me and it feels a little bit liberating to me. >> and is great to watch. it's nice to see. >> there are occasions when i think people gulp a little including myself to be fair but i really want to share the experiences that i've had. i came to this job as i write in the book and quite an unusual way and i was incredibly surprised when the president asked me to serve and slightly less surprised when i finally agreed. and then it was just from the

first moment a mad -- because we inherited a pretty serious agenda of problems and challenges. so the perspective that i have gained i think has encouraged me even more to speak my mind and contribute what i can to whatever is occurring. >> lets talk about the process of writing the book before we get to the substance of it because i remember from the last book you are in the senate and this is the honest to goodness truth because i was working with you on the book. we did a lot of work on a bet between midnight and 3:00 a.m. and i remember having routine beatings with you around your dining room table at 3:00 a.m.. we did that a few months to get that finish. this car got more time to really focus on it and i think it's interesting, you had a great team working for you but you're not somebody who has ever taken a draft it book a speech a chapter and just said oh great

this looks good let's put it between the cover and publish it right now. you have always kind of slaves over your writing. you still write in longhand on a legal pad. anybody who has been a somebody who is writing a book knows it's a little like watching someone go through labor. it's an incredibly painful process but it's a joy in the end and so on the scale of pain enjoy what was the process of writing this book like? >> i should preface what i say by making clear that lissa has been my partner and some of the most important writing and speaking that i have done going back to the white house years when she was a speechwriter at the white house and as i point out in the chapter called unfinished business about women's rights and lgbt brights and other human rights lissa was my partner in the women's speech in beijing. fast-forward to is also my

partner and a living history autobiography. what she is describing is actually true and it was incredibly stressful because i did have this day job that i loved. i had said and signed a contract so i was obligated to produce a book so i would come home and lissa despite all of her many responsibilities including her wonderful family would be around the dining room table with me as we struggled over the chapters in living history. this was different in that i left the state department. i had for the first time in many years much more freedom and control over my own schedule. i have a little third-floor attic study in the old farmhouse that we live in a new york and i would go up there early in the morning and i would make as many

detours as i possibly could. it was always time for something else. it was time to walk the dogs. it was time to go down and get more water but you know you have to be really well hydrated when you try to write. i just came up with a million reasons and then i read that you really should not sit for more than an hour. [laughter] that became my favorite excuse but it was a great experience despite how difficult it was. it was difficult because there was a mass of material that we were trying to condense. it was also hard to relive some of what happened and also to make sense in retrospect about what had occurred. i had a great team of researchers and advisers and people who would take my scribble he handwriting and translate it and come back with suggestions. it was a terrific process and

not way. even though i had more free time to do it i found it equally intense because something, once you start writing a book and you are putting yourself into and in my case i had sort of an idea that there might be some people who would read every word looking for something i said that might not be not entirely 1000% true or accurate so it was painful. i had a great backup with the researchers who helped me. so i enjoyed it but if i were to put it on a scale some days were off the charts wonderful and some days were not even on the charts terrible because it was hard to write. and then of course i wanted to make sure that it was a fair reflection of what i experienced and what i learned and i had to

some point let it go and hold my breath. >> the reviews have been really good. >> it's a hard book to write. it took 12 years of your life and it does involve public life and you may or may not be done with your public life and there are a lot of constraints. >> when i family got the complete manuscript i did impose upon list of because she is a great reader as well as a great writer and i did hold my breath that entire weekend because she has never minced words and she will come and say i don't think this works or that's not what you mean to say or this really could be restructured you know gently but clearly critical. she came back -- [laughter] she has a very good suggestions but she also had some very positive reinforcing reactions. i have to say that helps me

breathe a little better. i was not sleeping much toward the end because i was so worried that somehow i may have totally missed the point of what i was trying to communicate. it's an odd combination of personal particularly in the beginning when i talk about the creation of this team of rivals with the president and pretty wonky and dense. there were some chapters that i felt compelled to include like a chapter about the economic challenges we face abroad and how that affects us here at home and what it means to be competing if you are an american business or an american worker against state capitalism. the publishers world a little bit like really? i said i really need to talk about that. one of my primary jobs when i became secretary given where we were economically was to try to help with the work of the

president of secretary of treasury others were doing to restore confidence in our economy as well as in our political and foreign-policy agenda. so it was a complicated work. >> you were nice to have let me read it toward the end and i have to say this is the honest to god's truth. i loved it. it any manuscript can be improved on but i think i liked it a lot because it really isn't that wonky. you all have to read it. it's fascinating and it's entertaining. it's a traffic look and as i said earlier you really come through it in a way that maybe not as much in your earlier books an earlier time in your life and an earlier time in your career and i think you said you feel more liberated now that comes through. you do talk about the substance in the seven minutes ago when you assume the secretaryship president obama came in to iraq rob lands.

clearly there was a perception not only in this country but around the world that our world and their influence was diminishing. our economy was sputtering at us. some of our key alliances were afraid. iran was making no bones about its interest in acquiring to build a nuclear weapon. china was on the rise and then you have the ongoing challenges of climate change and poverty. so i'm wondering if being secretary of state is in somewhat of an exercise in triage. see that's an interesting way to put it less of because i think it's a multileveled job all at the same time. there are crises that require immediate attention and yes the intensive care unit. you have to put everybody together both physically or virtually. you have to be building those alliances and tending to those

partnerships in the midst of a crisis in order to deal with the crisis. then there are the emergencies but not as serious as the ones in the intensive care unit. you have got if you want to continue with this metaphor of big emergency room with all kinds of injuries. people who are there representing countries, representing individuals nonstate actors and the like all of whom need tending. they're not going away. they are expecting the united states to show up and to make a move. however we did find that and then of course there are the longer-term chronic problems. the award is filled with people who are struggling. i saw my role primarily to do while all i could to help restore american leadership. that meant several things to me. it certainly meant that i had to figure out how to deal with the

emergencies and how to tend to what were a broad array of complaints about our country from the fire eight years. it was not just iraq. it was not just the war on terror and the abuses that came to light. it was not just the economic collapse although that is a trifecta that was waiting on our doorstep. it was the feeling that somehow america had violated our own values. the rules that we had helped to construct and pushed for compliance and how countries and how countries are supposed to be behaving whether it was conventions that we had signed against torture or anti-ballistic missile treaties or whatever it might be. and that there was a sense of absence in some parts of the world. that was the message that came through to me when i began

making a series of phonecalls to leaders and those whom i called were very clear that they believed america had abandoned our traditional role as a pacific power and wondered where the v. obama administration would reassert our presence in asia. in europe we were struggling with the negative reactions to iraq, the war on terror and economic collapse but also the attitude toward europe, old europe versus new europe and a sense that somehow america no longer valued this critical relationship across the atlantic and there was so much bubbling below the surface. he came into office as one war in gaza was ending in a new government of israel being formed. we had a very serious set of decisions facing the president and the national security council on what to do about afghanistan since it appeared that the taliban had regained

bowman tom and the efforts to try to create some stability that would give a stronger base to the afghans themselves to defend themselves and govern themselves was eroding. it was a long list is a good description. it required several things simultaneously as well in responding to that analysis. one that required my presence and when the president asked me to serve as secretary of state he said i'm going to have to focus the vast majority of my time and attention on the economic crisis. because as bad as it -- as bad as it is a could get a lot worse and he said we have to demonstrate that america is no longer going to be leading with our military. of course we will maintain the strength of our military but we need to demonstrate more clearly

our values and that we can form partnershpartnersh ips and we can mobilize with common action and that is why i'm asking you because i know you can get on the airplane and start traveling the world. and it was a bit of a division of labor if you will which i totally understood and eventually agreed to carry. it was quite striking to me. i made that decision which i explained in the book to somewhat break tradition. go to asia in february of 2009 because half of that trip was just showing up. demonstrating that yes we had treaty alliances. we had interest, political strategic and economic. we were no longer going to be absent and then we worked to pivot in a very public way to send an unequivocal message that the united states would be part of asia's future where so much of the consequential decision-making for the world

will be made. i quickly turned around and went back to europe in march because i wanted to reassert our relationship. i always remember this old brownie girl scout song make new friends but kate -- keep the old ones. one is silver and the other is gold. remember that? i wanted to make a statement to our european partners and there was so much going on there as well because right before president obama took office gasp from the russian gas utility cut off the gas again. they had done it before 2006 and it became clear to me that the europeans were going to have to take a hard look at how dependent they wanted to be on a single source for their energy. sounds familiar and from that very first meeting began talking about what could he done to find

alternatives. so it was a multitask of the highest order to try to be present ,-com,-com ma reach out, come up with new ideas and make clear that america's presence and leadership was going to be front and center once again and you would be listening and not just talking. we would be looking to work multilaterally not just unilaterally and we would use the three d's of our foreign policy. diplomacy and development to promote our values and pursuer values and pursue oranges and protect our security. speed reading the book one of the quotes you have often used comes to mind and i think i said this to you at one point and that is politics is the strong and slow boring of hard words. what it comes to in this book is the day-to-day experience of being secretary of state is not just what is the most visible, the most --

the sexiest the most interesting even issue. there is a lot of tending to the vineyards. it's very labor-intensive. there's a lot of cultivation you mentioned asia trip. you laid importance groundwork in indonesia that later paid off with on san suu kyi and all those little things that aren't in the newspaper that nobody knows about that are on the schedule. so i think that really does come through through in the book. >> i'm glad you said that because i wanted that to come through because one of the virtues that i think we americans need to cultivate is patience. that is true probably in our lives but it's particularly true in our diplomacy. so much of what still matters in the world is based on building

relationships and looking for areas where you can establish some level of trust and one of the examples in the book which is quite dramatic actually is how we were able to navigate through a very difficult crisis over a blind dissident in china and not in danger the substance of the framework for the relationship we have been building with china. when i came and i knew from my time in the senate that we had very extensive economic discussions with china about the currency and about trade and those have been carried out primarily by the treasury department. but there were so many strategic issues that maybe we would deal with in a one off way but we could see that the chinese were

much more comfortable talking about all of the concerns around the economy than they were on political or strategic issues. so one of the first things i did was to propose within the demonstration that we combined the economic and create the strategic dialogue that would embody all of the various individual discussions we had with chinese counterparts. tim geithner agreed. the white house signed off on it. i presented it to the chinese when i was there on that first trip. they responded to it and that meant we put together teams from our government and dares to talk about everything from sanitary hygiene standards for food and produce or safety of toys to environmental clean energy to join student exchanges. we put it all out there to build

a much more comprehensive connection between our two governments that i hoped would not just last for one president but be part of building a framework into the future. that is what we did. we had intense meetings throughout the year that we would have an annual strategic and economic dialogue rotating between washington and beijing. i spend a lot of time with my counterparts the state counselor and foreign minister jan coogi and we had lots of in-depth discussion. so fast-forward to the night i am home here in ching 10 and the phone rings and i'm told that the blind dissident has escaped from house arrest and he is trying to make it to the embassy in beijing for safety and refuge and also to be given medical, emergency medical treatment for the foot that he injured.

and the question was what i direct our embassy staff to go out and meet him, pick him up and bring him in? now by any weighing of values and interests you can see why i have called this looks "hard choices." on the one hand we have this comprehensive relationship. we remake in progress and in a number of areas. others were stalled and we have developed very candid discussions with in and of itself was a step forward. .. cornerstone of our efforts to develop a more strategic deeper understanding of china. yet we have this human rights activist who thought to himself, i am being unjustly imprisoned

in my house. i need to escape. and where would i go? the one place in the world where he taught the values of freedom and human rights would be embodied come and namely the embassy the unit dates of america. and so there was a way and i have to do it in a very short period of time. and i concluded that we would go out and pick -- to fulfill from the very beginning. it was a consequential. there were people who disagree with it, but i felt comfortable throughout the difficult period of negotiation ecocide.at the

end of the day we were able to negotiate with the chinese over the outcomes with respect to mr. chen and his family. we also kind of has strategic and economic dialogue. but we would not have been able to do that had we not in best at the time and the patience and developing those relationships. and it is some pain that i have to be reminded my colleagues in government or elsewhere, we often as american show up with an agenda. here's a way to, then they ought to do that and then we're out of there. that still is not the way most people in the world behave. they want to take your measure.

they want to have a meal, maybe a cup of tea, talk about other things. a rubber coin into a meeting with the king of saudi arabia, king abdullah. and we were in a huge meeting room and i spent about 15 minutes talking with 10 and talking with the foreign minister about camels. i describe it in the book because i had driven up from the airport with the foreign minister and we have been all these callous that were out in the desert as we drove i to the camp of the king and the foreign minister was telling us how much we just liked campbell's. that's not liking kangaroos. there's just so hard to imagine. but we are having a bit of a banter back and forth every guide to the meeting i was a large formal setting.

i turned to the king and said your majesty, the foreign minister says he doesn't like camels. the king says what is wrong with him? we started having this conversation. so when we got to the real meat of it over lunch, where just the king and i could hear one another any of these two television that is hollow square table that was going away so no one could hear were seen except each other, we then get down to business because we have actually interact this to people, not to officials in a hurry. and i try to make a point over and over in the book that we just have to invest more time and that takes patience and it takes people willing to do that, to build those relationships. but i don't think we can achieve our goals without that. >> either way, the chen story is one of the cloak and dagger life imitates art kind of stories in the book. it is amazing when you read it.

can't possibly have happened the way it did. i also want to say you've improved dramatically in your pronunciation of foreign names. [laughter] i was impressed used both ends of the chinese leaders. not just the easy one syllable one. >> well, lissa traveled with the often as first lady and in the beginning of my time in the state department is ahead of my speechwriters at the state department. and it is true. i have absolutely no ear for language and its rate regret. i took latin when i was in high school and i think it's healthy with my vocabulary or least i hope it did because i took four years. and then i took french when i went to wells lake. i was enjoying it. i was not good at it, but i was learning and i loved the literature part. i got it down that if you're writing critiques of french literature i could say things

that love is hate, hate is love and the professor what say french. when i went to the army to see my french professor i said thinking about this course or that coors. he has not a result, your your talents lie elsewhere. [laughter] >> but she's pretty good now. >> are so many other things i want to talk about, but it's been a few messy days in iraq and i wish we could get your quick reaction to that. >> well, let me back up and start where we were when president obama took office. president bush had established a timetable for american withdrawal in 2011 as i recall. unless the iraqis agree to what is called a status of forces agreement that gives the necessary protections to americans soldiers. there is a great deal of work

done to try to figure out what the iraqis what if any follow one american force would be necessary and accepted. they needed intelligence. they needed trainers. they needed the kind of leadership's guild inculcated in the reconstituted iraqi army after it had been dissolved in the bush administration. well, it came down to the fact that maliki would not present a status of forces agreement and have made the decision inevitable. there is not going to be an agreement for american troops to stay, even to perform limited noncombat functions. the underlying problem here is not one of military preparedness

and security although we've seen neither is present in the conflict. the problem is the conception of government that maliki brought to the job of prime minister should. he would not commit to an inclusive government. he would not share power except with a very, very small circle. he was often quick to attack, even investigate, charged with crimes those who politically disagreed with him. and as a result, the inclusive governance structure that reached out to the elements, particularly the sunnis in iraq to try to overcome yes, very deeply felt historic differences, but necessary

changes if there were to be stability in iraq never happened. and the result of that failure at the governance level combined with the extraordinary success islamist extremist groups in syria and in particularly the one now known as the islamic state of iraq area has made this latest craze says especially dangerous. you don't have a government that can inspire loyalty even among its army and certainly not among its disparate group. and you have well-trained, very savvy fighters coming out of

syria, coming out of iraq, often aided and abetted, perhaps we are learning by former officers in the disbanded saddam hussein iraqi army. and it is a recipe for a horrendous conflict. they request that maliki is they came the president to provide support i know are being carefully can better. but i think that it's also imperative that maliki be presented with a set of conditions if you are to discuss seriously any kind of military support for the site again to jihads s. and that's a delicate and difficult task for our

government because we certainly don't want to fight their fight because he would be fighting for a dysfunctional, unrepresented, a rotarian government. and there is no reason on earth that i know of that we would never sacrifice a single american life for that. [applause] it is a however serious potential crisis with broad regional and even global goods. the capture of the turkish took not, the threat to all the embassies in fact, most particularly ours. the discipline of the patchwork, the kurdish forces as they does

protect kurdish areas, but also a fair to take over some of the cities, particularly clear-cut, which they have always believed should be buyers. what role will they ran play if you read and then cuts force -- cuts force troops to assist maliki the way they assented both quds forest to support assad, then we're looking at a war in the middle east that is going to cross borders and potentially threaten the larger region and beyond. the latest figures i've seen is that there are more than a thousand fighters on behalf of extremist groups in syria comment from just europe. and with open borders, no visa

restrictions, somebody wrote in france or germany or britain or the netherlands were ever will be able to come home and will be able to travel. so this has been vocations far beyond what if anything we think we can and should do to try to stave off a total collapse of the maliki government. i would just add one other note. if you look at where we are in the region, the conflict in syria, which right now is still a stalemate, but i thought this control in large parts of the country. but there is many hundreds of thousands of refugees in jordan, lebanon, turkey, erratic and you have the tensions that are pervasive throughout the region be really fat on fire in iraq

right now. it could draw in other countries because of the tax or because of the decision on the part of other governments that they have to defend either the sunnis or defend the shia or go after the kurds. lots of competing interests. ..

and you write about a lot of those sort of comedies. the gauzy being the most obvious, but there are a lot of funny things that happen, and i'm sure in retrospect it seem even funnier, sort of comedic moments. there has to be a story. one in bulgaria, a shoot coming off at an inopportune moment. a unique moment when president obama pulls you aside and points out that you have food and energy. and then one of my favorites is a funny thing, and i wanted to mention as a little bit. your at the end of the trip and on a plane and everyone can

finally relax. your staff turns on a movie. plane and everyone can finally relax so your staff turns on a movie. tell us about that. >> the fir thing iould say >> the first thing i would say is the choice of movie was low-grade. i think that is because by the end of those trips which were and i think that's because by the end of those trips which were very long moving from timezone to timezone everybody was exhausted via nobody wanted to thank. everybody just slumped back in their chairs and voted for the most mindless entertainment that was available on our plane. but the movie about this by -- reach? >> it's called reach. >> and there's a scene in which the actor playing the character, what was this person? robert something. anyway he says you know we don't

need any more women in pants like hillary clinton. [laughter] >> i love that story. >> and the whole plane just burst into laughter. but lissa is right because they are all these things going on while i am you know wading through briefing books that are 3 feet high or on the phone arguing with some foreign minister i am about to see about something or consoling someone who has had a terrible incident in their country. so i don't know half the things that were going on but we had a lot of misadventures. now one which is kind of consequential and it ended up being fine. [laughter] but we would also go on the strips and we had a great press

corps in the state department. many really experienced journalist who had covered the state department and stationed overseas and it was really a pleasure working with them because they were always asking very substantive questions about how does this compare with what secretary powell did or what do you think if you would take what madeline albright said? they knew the whole landscape but they too were kind of letting down their hair so to speak. so we are in lima peru and we are trying to, i'm trying to work. i had to go to the meeting of the organization of american space oas and i'm trying to finalize the conditions that are going to be posed by the u.n. security council on i ran. we came in with our two-part strategy and we knew it wasn't enough for the united states to be putting the pressure on. we need to get the international community and that meant

primarily convincing russia which i think we succeeded in which the president i and national security jim jones told medvedev and sergey lavrov and a three on three meeting that the iranians had elton underground facility and the russians didn't know it. i think that surprise them and made them much more amenable to going along with the security council. the chinese who needed oil and gas from everywhere did not want to see that supply cut off so they took a lot more convincing and working and working. the chinese ambassador very able diplomat ambassadoambassado r to the united states was covering the oas meeting in lima and i was trying to get a meeting with him to see if i could get them to sign off on the final language because he had been authorized to convey that back to beijing. he had meetings and finally we were worried we wouldn't get to the meeting so the press was having a day piece goes sour

happy hour. [laughter] and apparently piece goes sours in that very happy especially these that were made in lima. so we where looking for the ambassador to try to find a time and i went down to the bar in the hotel and we were trading stories and chatting each other up and i'm having a piece goes sour. pretty soon things are looking really positive and optimistic. [laughter] and then all of a sudden one of my core service officers comes up and says madam secretary the chinese ambassador is here. i said where? right there. oh mr. ambassador please come in. i taken to a back table and we pull out all the papers. mark wendler the excellent, now he is a white house reporter for the times and went to the state department he sees me sitting

with his chinese man and we are looking and he comes over varying too big piece company sours. here is one for you madam secretary, here's one for you. ambassador, yes there he is. you had to be flexible and agile and roll literally and figuratively with whatever was running. >> i want to take a question from the audience and this is from jersey anderson. this is really a hardball. did you really autograph all these books? [laughter] >> you know what? i really did. i really did. [applause] and between the time that i finished the book and went in and set it to printing i had a three-week period and they sent me 21,000 pages so i started

signing hillary rodham clinton. i thought this is going to take me until labor day. i talked to lissa and some other people and they said they'll personalize it. you say hillary. that i can do so i sat in the turn down the old movie channels because it was relaxing and just sat there inside. the ones that you are getting have all been personally signed by me. [applause] >> you mentioned beijing. the 20th anniversary this year and i want to tell a quick story and it does want to ask you about this. you almost didn't go. you almost didn't go because the chinese had arrested a naturalized citizen saying he was an american spy but we ended

up going and worked really hard on this speech. i think i've told you this once but there was an amazing thing that happened personally which was that i walked up and we had gone from washington to why he. we met with the president of white and then we flew to guam and went from guam to beijing and we were on the last draft of the beach that have been closely held. i took it up to him and you obviously obviously knew this speech inside out. i will never forget this. it was very corny but a experience for me. i gave you the speech and you didn't say anything for a moment moment of any set i just want to push the envelope as far as i can on human rights and women's rights. [applause] i was so struck by that. this is the corny part. i was so glad to be in america and to have a first lady who is going to go into what was kind of the diplomatic minefield at that time and make this assertion. you went on to say after that

that women's issues and women's rights are the unfinished business of the world. i'm just wondering where do you think things stand now? >> listen that speech which you worked so hard on an madeline albright was with us and she provided great feedback as we were going to the drafts, was so important to me personally because i thought the united states needed to leave on women's rights and this was the opportunity to do so at this international conference. and it was very important to set forth an agenda. out of the conference despite all of the difficulties 189 countries agreed on what was called the platform for action, the full participation of women and girls. i use that oath as first lady and then a senator and certainly secretary of state to refer to

and to engage with leaders and groups, civil societies all over the world to say your nations signed up for this. how far have you come? then when i left the state department i went to work with my husband and my daughter at the clinton foundation and there were a lot of the important programs that my husband had established and chelsea was instrumental in. i wanted to add three more. one of them was what we called the no ceilings full participation project. what we are doing in partnership with the gates foundation and many other partners, the u.n., is gathering all the data that we can find. i was just at the world bank two weeks ago with some important announcements that the bank was making with president jim kim and try to put it all together in one place where we can measure the progress we have made but also makes make clear

that gap that still remain. it's been already a very meaningful experience for me because we still have lots of countries with laws that are women from many professions. we still have countries where they don't even record all the girls births because it's just not that important. we have made progress under the millennial development goals on primary education and then we just drop off dramatically with secondary higher education. we are doing a better job of combating maternal mortality but we still have hundreds of thousands of women die every year and on and on. what we want to be a is a centerpiece for a robust discussion in the next year as we approach the 20th anniversary in 2015 about what we have achieved, what has

worked in other countries and how much more we have to do. there is a divide. there are countries where law still need to be changed. laws in the books need to be implemented. cultural and religious barriers to women's participation need to be questioned from within, on and on. in the developed world we also want to look at the disparities that still exist between the opportunities for women and girls versus men and boys. a lot of those are what we call internal barriers. my friend cheryl sandberg in her book lean and writes about a lot of the research, the famous research of two resumes exactly the same one is labeled by henry brown and one is by heidi brown and people are much more favorable toward henry and raising questions about heidi. the same information. the same profile. these deep cultural

psychological internal barriers that people have about women and girls and the women and girls have about themselves. that's a more difficult area to explore and to measure but you look at political participation in our country and you certainly know we are near half. we don't have half of the appropriations for corporate officers held by women on and on. so i think it's going to be real food for thought for both countries where there is so much work to be done to just in the oppression and the abuse and the dehumanizing of women and other countries like our own where we made so much progress but that we still have so much more we can do, no question. just to go back for second you were talking about melekian what a frustrating leader he was. you have traveled almost a

million miles a secretary not to mention as senator and first lady and probably the only foreign leader has been kim jong-un speaking of bad pronunciation. the question i want to ask what i'm going to put it out there and we are going to go to another question because we are almost out of time is when you look into vladimir putin's eyes. [laughter] do you see the soul of a man who cares deeply about his country or the soul of a kgb agent? just asking. [laughter] do you want me to come back to that? >> fascinating. [laughter] [applause] he and i have exchanged a few verbal volleys going back to the last several years. his most recent was to call me

weak but then quickly adding weaknesses probably not so bad and a woman. [laughter] yeah me too. at. [laughter] [applause] when i wrote about him what i tried to do is demonstrate obviously that he is a very tough person who embodies a lot of hard choices. but the real sadness and i do say that deliberately is that his view of russia's greatness is rooted in the past, not the future. think about how well-educated and how successful so many russian immigrants are in europe and the united states and elsewhere. one of the cofounders of google. think of what could be happening in russia today if you had leadership that wasn't trying to

extend a sphere of influence, dominate central asia, intimidate central and eastern europe, prevent countries like ukraine from making their own decisions, impose a few of greatness that is rooted in the past instead of working to create a modern economy, diversified beyond oil and gas, create more opportunities for people but that's not his goal. his goal is to as much as possible re-create the past. that to me is yet another chapter in the missed opportunities that we have seen time and again suffered by the russian people. i have a couple of stories in my chapter about him. i do talk about why we really did push to get the so-called

reset done when medvedev was president and we were successful in the security council sanctions on iran getting a new s.t.a.r.t. treaty to limit nuclear weapons between us and restart inspections and transport important material and troops into afghanistan across russia. but when putin made his announcement he would be president and odd sort of presidential campaign if you stop and think about it. they were both standing there and i think they both had on like black leather jackets. poured medvedev who really did try to expand russia's horizon and went to silicon valley and saw what was possible and putin says i will be president you will be prime minister and then they had parliamentary elections for the presidential election and they were filled with irregularities and i criticized the elections but it wasn't my

opinion that counted as much as the tens of thousands of russians who filled the streets. putin attacked me for having caused the protests. when i next saw him i said you know mr. president that's not the way it works. he is a determined, relentless pursuer of his vision of a russia from the past and it is as i said unfortunate. the united states and the west has to make very clear that whatever his vision is a cannot upset the stability and order that was established in europe first after the second world war and then after the collapse of the soviet union and it's going to again take patients but firmness to send that message unequivocally to him so it's a complicated situation and one that we have to watch very closely.

>> there are a lot of stories about leaders and semi-really connected in the book and is one of the most fun parts of the book to learn what these people are like as real people and not just as figureheads. we are actually i hate to say it just about out of time so we are going to have one last question and i'm going to take it as an audience question but i just want to sort of ask a little set up to it. that is that you acquired a new title during four years as secretary which was mother of the bride. you are about to acquire another new title, grandmother. [applause] you suffered through some difficult losses including especially if your mother too many of us knew that she worked with you at the end of her life. she was adored by her staff. i was struck by the memorial that you held of the number of chelsea's friends who spoke about her and her staff who spoke about her.

everyone she came in contact with and now of course a grandmother to your daughter in chelsea was so close to your mother, to her grandmother. you have a lot to play looking ahead which gets to the last question and it comes from tyler smith via twitter who says what do you want your legacy to be? >> for the state department or my life? >> he just says what you want your legacy to be. >> well i guess one way to think about it might be as we look ahead as a grandmother and you know better than most people the world that this child will be born into. you have to think about your life and caring for your grandchild and you probably have given a little thought caring for our collective. [laughter] so how do you balance all of that. [applause]

>> well i don't think about a legacy. i think about my life because i have had quite an unpredictable life and i thought a lot about that when i was writing the book i could never when i was growing up in cambridge illinois have imagined what i have had the great pleasure of experiencing, the challenges and difficulties along with the extraordinary experiences and opportunities and i think that really is at the core of what i care the most about both for my own family my future grandchild but also for our country i want young people particularly to feel as though the future may not be totally clear to you but it looks like

it's full of promise for you, that you have the opportunity because you are acquiring an education, because you are willing to work hard, to be given your definition of the american dream. that is how i was raised. my mother who did live with us during the last 10 years of her life was the product of a very abusive neglectful home but all along her much more difficult life of her childhood she would encounter people who showed kindness and who are part of a broader community than just the family is so let her down. so she learned how to user education even though she only graduated from high school. she was incredibly intelligent

and kept taking college courses almost into her 80s. she was supported by the community and really nurtured by her belief in what this country meant. she instilled that in my and everyone that she touched. but you had to take responsibility and you had to have a good work ethic but you were part of a community. it wasn't just either the individual or a member of a community. it was be an individuaindividua l within a community and in a larger community of our country. so what i hope is that my grandchild when he or she comes into the world this fall, will have that same view of what america means and why america matters. i had such a perspective from outside for those four years, i saw us once again using our

innovation, our energy and our resilience to come back from a terrible economic crisis that is still not fully resolved. but i also saw so much disagreement and argument about what we were doing and what we stood for and what were the right decisions and one particular moment that i read about in the book happened to me when i was in hong kong in july 2011. it was during the first serious effort by some in the congress to default on our debts. i had a pre-existing speech and there were all these asian business leaders there. they stood in line to say to me what's happening in washington? what is going to go on there? is the united states really going to default on its debts and i said oh no of course not.

we will figure it out. we will work her our way through the politics of it and i had my fingers crossed behind my back. what i noticed on that first occasion was bewilderment, confusion. how could a great country do this to themselves? this is about paying debts that they are devoted for whether they agreed to or not it was voted for. fast-forward to last fall and we have a government shutdown that prevented the president from going to important meeting in asia where the president of china, president putin of russie united states was absent. and once again talking seriously about defaulting on the debt. i asked my team to give me the news coverage about what people were saying around the world reticular leann asia and not exclusively europe and latin america and it was no longer be wildermuth. it was contempt. it was how can you trust

americans? i can even run a government anymore. one chinese official said it's time to de-americanized the world. let's move toward a different reserve currency besides the dollar. those are consequential assessments of us because we cannot be strong abroad we are not strong at home. we cannot continue to try to argue for and implement a rules-based order in the global economy where people have to play by those rules and where there are measures of accountability if they don't if we can't demonstrate that our economy is working for everybody. so the book is about my time as secretary of state that i carry with me all of my life experiences. i'm not ready to stop and think about the legacy because i want to keep thinking about what my life has meant and what my obligations are to my grandchild and everyone else and i'm going

to do that through the work of the clinton foundation in other ways. but it is -- [applause] [applause] [cheers and applause] >> i will hasten to add, it is a question in the responsibility for all of us and a hard choice and a very hard choice. it is a very hard choice but i think all of us have some hard choices about what kind of citizens we are going to be, what we are going to ask of our leaders but also we are going to ask of ourselves and what has always made as strong as americans goes back to that incredibly astute observation by de tocqueville when he came to

walk around and understand what this country is about and understand with his countries about any look at how we organized herself and how we were democracy and the institutions we were building. he said he came down to the habits of our hearts. i think we have got to ask ourselves what it means today to be an american in the 21st century and what we expect from each other, what we expect from our government and what we expect from our businesses are academic institutions. because i'm more optimistic and confident about what our potential is but i know we have some hard choices to make to try to realize that so thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much. i'm sorry we don't have more time. thank you all very much. [applause] thank you.

thank you all. [applause] hello, how are you? hi create thank you. how are you doing? how are you? nice to [inaudible conversations] >> secretary : is on the bookstore. she made a stop at a cost go in arlington, virginia. book tv was there. the former secretary of state signed more than 1,000 copies of her latest book. here is portion of it. you can see more online and booktv.org.

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>> host: ken adelman and welcome and congratulations on your traffic but. let me just start by asking the most obvious question which is why now? what made you decide to revisit this chapter of the cold