The former U.S. Secretary of State will “let her guard down” in the political memoir, say publishers Simon & Schuster

Hillary Clinton is calling her new book What Happened and promises unprecedented candour as she remembers her stunning defeat last year to U.S. President Donald Trump.

“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net,” Ms. Clinton writes in the introduction, according to publisher Simon & Schuster. “Now I’m letting my guard down.”

Simon & Schuster said that Ms. Clinton’s book will be a highly personal work that also is a “cautionary tale” about Russian interference in last year’s election and its threat to democracy.

In public remarks since last fall, the Democrat has cited Russia as a factor in her defeat to her Republican opponent, along with a letter sent by then-FBI Director James Comey less than two weeks before the election.

Mr. Comey’s letter, sent to Congress on Oct. 28, said the FBI “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Ms. Clinton used as Secretary of State. Days later, Mr. Comey wrote that the FBI did not find anything new.

Intense experience

“Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules,” according to Simon & Schuster.

“In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterwards.”

What Happened is scheduled to come out September 12. Ms. Clinton’s previous works include the 2003 memoir Living History, published while she was a U.S. senator from New York, and a book about her years as secretary of state, Hard Choices, which came out in 2014 as she prepared to launch her presidential candidacy.

She also wrote It Takes a Village — And Other Lessons Children Teach Us when she was U.S. First Lady.

Ms. Clinton’s upcoming memoir isn’t the first political book to be called What Happened. Scott McClellan, a former White House press secretary during the George W. Bush administration, released a book with the same title in 2008. Mr. McClellan’s memoir was an unexpectedly critical take on his former boss that became a bestseller.