money or no formal education cahow -- purple and they struggled. they did not immediately hit it big and they were discouraged the first few years but they persevered. they never became rich. never became famous that working as a bartender and of vapor, another had a lot of jobs for:she worked as a cashier then made at the imperial palace i lived here six years growing up. them back to miami my dad primarily was a bartender working their jobs at the bowling alley here is what they achieved they owned a home in a neighborhood to raise four children and left all of them better with a life better than what they knew to retire with dignity and security. the neck cemetery the american dream is to leave, as many make it is not true so people all over the world have the dream. the desire not just to be better off so why they call that the american dream with so many can achieve it here. that is the real american dream. so it has a very profound statement read every human being in north america but every human get some life and liberty the pursuit of happiness. but those rights, for your creator but the purpose of that government is to protect those rights the only is to protect those rights they are the words we have grown numb to because that is the reason why everything else because that from the freedom absolutely but also economic freedom. for example, the system of free enterprise for cry of love it because if you look at my background a bartender and a maid never lived in the mansion but did not inherit any money you put that into a political computer it spit sell leftwing liberal. [laughter] but you know, why i'm not? because free enterprise and limited government the only governing model in the history of the world made it possible deal on a model in the history of the world to be more successful without making someone else worse off the only economic model in the history of the world i can climb without having to knock you down the old one this is the economy is not a zero sum game. my parents understood that. i am not exactly sure how but from incentive. my father used to remind is the reason why he had a job because someone who had access to money to open the hotel the he worked in the people of the country had enough money to go to las vegas to new gimbel been treated at the bars. [laughter] that is why it was possible. is the american dream dead today. >> but the role has changed and those policies have made a harder than ever. there are two major changes happening at the same time in the first the economy is becoming global. things have happened in the '60s or '70s many of the other countries developed still recovering from world war ii we have limited competition it was not a good idea to raise taxes be you could get away with it that was a terrible idea to increase regulation bayou could get away with it because you didn't have much competition. not any more now there are dozens of countries around the world that are trying to copy the things that we did as twentieth century and the results of the world is globally competitive win now compete with people halfway around the world with the best ideas and talent and company the second change is technology. that has changed everything and certainly the way we live. 10 years ago if i said i would google you you would have been offended. [laughter] . . what we were calling the news ticker series, featuring prominent authors. i'd like to thank everyone connect it was listener who helped to organize this evenings event. the guest of honor is done primarily of course for her political goals as first lady, u.s. senator from new york in the 67th secretary of state. she's also just published her fifth book and has several previous best sailors to her name. so added to the list of credits after hillary rodham clinton should certainly be accomplished author. "hard choices," her memoir about her four years as secretary of state recounts how she came to accept a cabinet position offered by her former political rival and led the effort to deny nations standing around the world. the book also reveals some of the last want cash, less battle hardened side of her not, like wimps in the public humor as come as self-deprecating, maternal, maybe even grant maternal. although hillary credits a small team of people for helping with the book, she carved out months on her calendar to write and rewrite it herself and there is told to say work that is undeniably in her voice. but also clearly leaves room for future chapters in one worn by more someday. [applause] this evenings event is particularly special. it is particularly special for me because i not only get to introduce the main speaker, but also my wife who will be appearing conversation with hillary. the two of them go back together to the early days of the clinton administration and lissa has sent served with hillary in various roles as white house and state department speechwriter, communications or to the first lady. campaign advisor and collaborator on hillary's white house memoir, living history. these days when hillary and lissa talk, they spend most of their time discussing the latest great novel, mystery or biography they are breeding. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming hillary rodham clinton and lissa muscatine. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. great. [cheers and applause] thank you so much. [cheers and applause] >> well, that was very nice. it is great to have you. thank you so much. >> thanks to you and brett are running such a great bookstore, politics & prose. >> speaking up hooks, you got it out for four days now. >> is right. for. >> it's been one of the spaces that was more like when your secretary and you start your books are all over the place in doing these interviews. you keep a pretty frenetic pace. i have to ask you because her the first time i read this book and i read it several times now, i was struck by a kind of lightheartedness. it's a serious book. it deals with obviously very serious issues. but there's a lighter side that comes true. so i am wondering if i've watched you in the first four days and it has been tough interviews to me seem like you're having a good time. >> well, i am having a good time and that is in part due to the enthusiasm that i have experienced as i've traveled around in the last couple of days. it is a great feeling to everett in a book about for years that were consequential in my view we can talk about that, but which for me were both a personal journey and a very heavy responsibility. and what i tried to do in the vote was write it so that i could give you, the readers, a bit of a peek behind the curtain because the headline certainly tell some of the story, but not all of the story. and it is more difficult to even get information about the so-called trend line. i wanted to combine both. 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 adult. i mean, whatever i could remember and wanted to share. the publisher did say you've got to cut two thirds of this book. and so, i worked hard to keep the combination of seriousness because obviously there is a lot of that, but also the human diet. not just me, but what i saw and learned as i traveled around the world. >> you've never been shy about your opinions, but it does seem to me you are pretty free to speak your mind these days. >> i think that is true. from some of the reactions i've had the past few days. [laughter] i say in the book that a beard is just a wonderful wealth of x. but i've now had. ap it is because i am totally god with, you know, being really careful about what to say because somebody might think this instead of that just gets too exhausting and frustrating. it just seems a whole lot easier to just put it out there and hope people get used to it. whether you agree with that or not, to know exactly where it coming from, what i think about what i feel, i really believe that is missing in both our government dialogue and of course many of you probably are some houses heated in some way with our government certainly in our political dialogue. there's so many big issues and i talk about some of them, both in nationally and nationally. and i don't agree dean either shouting matches for finger-pointing or biting one's tongue. i think we really need to have an open and straightforward conversation and maybe i'm trying to model that. i don't know, but that is how it feels to me. it feels a little bit liberating to me. >> and it's great to watch i have to say. it's nice to see. >> you know, there are occasions when people go up 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 that was incredibly surprised when the president asked me to serve as a little surprise when i finally read too. and then it was just from the very first moment a mad dash because we inherited a pretty serious agenda of problems and challenges. so the perspective that i've gained a sink has encouraged me even more to speak my mind contribute what i can to whatever debate is occurring. >> let's talk about the process of writing the book before we get to the substance of it because i remember from the last book you had a day job. you were in the senate and this is really true. honest to goodness truth because i was working with you on the boat. he did a lot of the work between midnight and 3:00 a.m. and i remember having routine meeting to run your dinner table at 3:00 a.m. we did that for a few months to get it finished. he carved up more time to really focus on it. i think it is interesting. you had a great team working for you, be you or not somebody who's ever taken a draft of a book, speech, chapter and say this looks good. it's been between a cover or publisher right now. it's fine. you've always played over here fighting. you write, rewrite, you still write in longhand on a legal pad and anybody who's been with anyone writing a book knows it's like watching someone go through labor. it's an incredibly painful process, but there's great joy at the end. on the scale of pain and joy, what was the process of writing this book like for you? >> i should preface what i say by making clear that lissa has been my part or in some of the most portentous writing and speaking that i've done going back to the white house years when she was a speechwriter at the white house. nsa point out in the chapter called unfinished business about women's rights and all gpt rights and other human rights, lissa was my partner in the women's speech and beijing. fast forward, she was also my partner in the living history autobiography. what she has described because the ways this day job that i loved, but i bet and sign the contracts are obligated to produce a book. so i would come home and lissa despite her responsibilities including her wonderful family with bandit dining room room table with me as we struggled over the chapters in living history. this is different in that i left the state department. i had for the first time in many years much more freedom and control over my unscheduled. i had a 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 my water because you have to be really well hydrated. i just came up with a million reasons. and then of course i read you really should not set for more than an hour. so that became my favorite excuse. but it was a great experience despite how difficult it was. it was difficult because there was a massive cheerio 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 don't rate advisors and people who would take me scraggly handwriting and trans payday combat with the chechens. it was a terrific process in that way. even though i had more free time to do it, i found it equally intense because once you start writing a book and you're putting yourself in to it, and in my case, as sort of an idea there might be some people who would read every word, looking for something i said that might not be entirely one dozen% true or accurate. so it was painful and 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, sundays were off the charts wonderful and sundays were not even on the chart terrible because it was hard to write. and then of course i wanted to make sure it was a fair reflection of what i experienced is what i learned. i had to at some point let it go and hold my breath and i'm pleased with the way it came out. >> the reviews have been really good. >> much to my amazement. >> you may or may not be done with your public life. >> when i finally got >> i did impose upon lissa because she's great reader as well as great writer. i did hold my best because she has never minced words. that's not what she meant to say. she came back and she had some very good soup sessions. read some positive reinforcing reactions. i have to say that help me breathe a little better. i'm worried i may have totally missed the point of trying to communicate and it's a nice combination of personal, particularly in the beginning when i talk about the creation of this team of rivals with the president and then pretty wonky and dad. there were some chapters i felt called 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 could eating if you're an american business are an american worker against a capitalism. i know that some ice in the editing process and the publisher is kind of rolled a little bit. i said i really need to talk about that because one of my primary jobs that i became secretary given where we were economically was to try to help with the work the president and the secretary of treasury to restore confidence in our economy as well as our political and foreign-policy agenda that. >> i loved it for the first three. any manuscript can be improved on. it may have seemed like there were some denser portions. it's fascinating, entertaining. it's a terrific book and as i said earlier, you come third in a way that not as much in some of the earlier books as an earlier time in life and career and i think you said you feel more liberated now and i think that comes through. we do and should talk about the substance. he said a minute ago that when you assume the secretary should come to you and president obama came into a raft of problems. clearly there is a perception in this country and around the world that are broad influence was diminishing. our economy was sputtering out fast. some other key alliances were afraid or afraid. karen was making no bones about its interest in acquiring or building a nuclear weapon. china was on the rise and you have the yarn the challenges of climate change in poverty and human rights. and so, i'm wondering if the secretary of state is in somewhat of an exercise in triage. >> that's an interesting way to put it, lissa because i think it is a multilevel job all at the same time. there are crises that require immediate attention in the intensive care unit. i mean, you have to put everybody together, both physically or virtually. you have to be building those alliance is in tending to those partnerships in the midst of a crisis in order to deal with the crisis. but then there are the emergencies, but not as serious as the one they tend to care unit. if you continue with this metaphor, a big emergency room with all kinds of injuries. people who are there representing countries, representing individuals, nonstate is in the light, all of whom need tending. they are not going away. they are expect to the united states to show up and to make a move however we define that. and of course there are the longer-term chronic problems, the words filled with people who are struggling. i saw my role primarily to do all it could to restore american leadership. and that meant several things to me. it certainly meant that i had to figure out how to deal with the emergencies and how to 10 to over a broad array of complaints about our country from the prior eight years. it was not just iraq. it was not just the war on terror and the pieces 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 we had help to construct and pushed for compliance and how countries were supposed to be behaving, whether it was conventions that we assigned against torture or it was the anti-ballistic missile treaties or whatever it may be in that there was a sense of that some parts of the world. that was the message that came through to me when i began making a series of phone calls to leaders in no whom i caught in a show were very clear that they believed america had abandoned her traditional role as a pacific power and wondered whether the obama administration would reassert our presence in a show. we were struggling with the negative reactions with iraq of the on terror. but also the attitude of old europe versus new europe in the sense that somehow america no longer value this critical relationship across the atlantic. and there is so much bubbling below the surface. we came into office as one born gossett was ending, a new roland israel be informed. we had a very serious set of decisions facing the president and the national out what to do about afghanistan since it appeared the taliban had regained momentum and the gaffer's to try to create some stability with a stronger base for the afghans themselves and govern themselves, it was a long list. triage is a good description and it required other things simultaneously in responding to that analysis. one, it required my presence. 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 in detention on an economic base because as bad as it is, it could get a lot worse. and he said we have to demonstrate that america is no longer going to be bleeding 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 partnerships and mobilize common action. that is why i'm asking you because i know you can get on the airplane and start traveling the world. he was a bit of a division of labor to the, which i totally and eventually agreed to kerry. and it was quite striking to me. i made the decision, which are explained in the book to summer break tradition, go to asia in february 29 because half of the trip was just showing up, and demonstrating they just precut treaty alliances. brief adventurous, political strategic alliance. there were no longer going to be absent and then we worked to pay that 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 would be made. i quickly turned around and went to europe in march because i wanted to reassert our relationship. i quote this old brownie girl scouts on making friends but keep the old. what a silver and the other's gold. i wanted it to be a real statement of our commitment to our european partners. and there was so much going on there as a because right before president obama took office, gas prom, the russian gas utility cut off gas again. they had done that in 2006 and it came apparent to me that the europeans would have to take a look at how dependent they wanted to be on a single source for their energy. sounds familiar. from that very first meeting, we began talking about what could he done to find alternatives. so it was a multitasking of the highest order to try to be president, reach out, come up with new ideas and make clear that america's presence and leadership is going to be front and center once again it would be listening, not just talking. we would work multilaterally, not just unilaterally. and we would use the 3-d policy. not just defense, but diplomacy and develop and to promote our values and worse receive our interests and protect our security. >> reading the book, one of the quotes you have often used came to mind to me. i think i to see you at one time. politics is as strong and slow boring of hard words. but really comes through in this book is sort of the day-to-day experience of being secretary of state is not just what is the most visible, the sexiest, most interesting even issue. there's an issue and it's very labor intensive and there's a lot of cultivation. you mentioned the asia trip. he lived an important groundwork in indonesia that later paid off in burma with democratic reforms there and all those little things that aren't in the newspaper that nobody knows about bettering your schedule. i should have been a bilateral with the foreign minister some country that we got where it is on the map but must we are extremely well-educated. so i think there really does come through in the book. >> i'm glad you said that because i wanted that to come through. one of the virtues that i think we americans need to cultivate his patients. and that is true probably in our lives, but it is particularly true in our diplomacy because so much of what the matters in the world is based on building relationships and looking for areas where you can bush some level of trust. and one of the examples in the book, which was quite dramatic actually is how we were able to navigate through the very difficult crisis over wind dissident in china and not endanger the substance of the framework for the relationship we had been building with china. when i came in, i knew from my time in the senate that we had very good economic discussions with china about currency, about trade. and those had been carried out primarily by the treasury department. but there were so many strategic issues that maybe we would deal with anyone off way. but we could see the chinese are much more common herbal 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 superposed up in the administration that we combined economic and create the strategic dialogue that would embody all the various individual discussions we had with chinese counterparts. tim geithner agreed and presented it on that first trip. they responded to it. i'm not that we put together teams from our government and dares to talk about everything unsanitary hygiene standards for food and produce for safe your choice to environmental, clean energy, joint projects to 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. we had intense meetings throughout the year. that would have an annual strategic and economic dialogue rotated between washington and beijing. i spent a lot of time with my counterparts, the counselor david rohde and foreign minister jan cici and lots of in-depth discussion. so fast forward to tonight i am home here in washing 10 and the phone rang and i am told by dissident has escaped from house arrest and he is trying to make it to the u.s. embassy in beijing for safety and refuge and also to be given emergency medical treatment for the foot that the answer. the question was what i direct our embassy staff to go out, meet him, pick him up and bring him in. now, by any waiting of values and interests, you can see why a call this book "hard choices." i'm the one hand, we have this comprehensive relationship. we were making progress in a number of areas. others were solved, but we had developed very candid discussions of which in another's alphas this that forward. and i was supposed to be leaving in just a few days for the annual meeting in beijing. that had been the 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. .. this clearly continued during your tenure as secretary of state and you write about a lot of this sort of, the. there were dark days obviously benghazi being the most obvious that there were a lot of funny things that happened and i'm sure in retrospect they seem even funnier, sort of comedic moments. of course there had to be a hair story so there's a hair story in bulgaria and there's a shoe coming off an opportune moment in france. there is a neat you need to floss moment when president obama poe suicide in the meeting and points out that you have food in your teeth. [laughter] and then one of my favorites is a funny thing and i wanted to mention it a little bit. a funny thing happens at the end of your trip and you are on the plane and everyone can finally relax so your staff turns on a movie. tell us about that. >> the first thing i would say is the choice of movie was often really low grade. [laughter] 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

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