As I say, this is not a future-candidate’s book, which makes it much livelier to read. But what about the main policy question it actually raises: namely, what could have happened in American politics last year, to deliver a man like Donald Trump to office?

Based on what we know now, the 2016 presidential election is likely to share a lasting twilight-zone quality with the election of 2000. Each led to an unfortunate result, by my lights—the election of George W. Bush in one case, of Donald Trump in the other—through what was, by anyone’s lights, the interaction of a thousand factors whose relative impacts no one will ever be able to separate. So many things “made the difference” in each race that we’ll never know which specific one was most important or consequential. In each case, the loser of the popular vote ended up in the White House—something that seemed a mainly theoretical twist back before Bush v. Gore, since no living American had experienced it. (Before that, the last time it happened was in 1888.) For 2000, no one will know for sure whether the outcome would have been different without Ralph Nader—or the designer of the “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County, Florida; or the heavy hand of the Supreme Court; or other factors we could discuss endlessly. For 2016, no one will know for sure whether the outcome would have been different without James Comey—or with more scruples by Facebook, or more trips to Wisconsin (although Hillary Clinton addresses this one at length), or a different response to Trump in the debates, or no word “deplorables,” or without Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, or other factors we could discuss endlessly.

What Happened goes into these explanations and more. Before you ask, Hillary Clinton’s starting point is that she lost the election and is mainly to blame herself. For instance:

I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want—but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.

If you’ve read this book, with Clinton’s repeated reminders that blame for this historic disaster begins with her, you’re more likely to start yelling at the TV—or the newspaper or the website—when you see pundits, mainly male, saying that it’s time for Hillary Clinton to “step back” or “stop whining” or “get off the stage” or “stop making excuses.” She’s telling an interesting and important tale—and one with uncomfortable implications for the press among other institutions.

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This is the time to mention that I have not been a Hillary Clinton booster. In last year’s campaign I supported her over Donald Trump (as did our magazine in a rare editorial), but I would have favored anyone over him. Eight years earlier, I favored Barack Obama in the Democratic primary against Clinton, and then in the general-election contest with John McCain. The biggest reason for my preference in the primaries was the Iraq war: I disagreed with Hillary Clinton’s support for it 15 years ago, and agreed with Obama’s opposition. I think she is impeccably qualified for high office—and, as she points out herself, she’s always been very popular once in a job, including senator and secretary of state, though controversial and unpopular while competing for jobs. But I have been aware from our travels across the country of how polarizing and demonized a figure she has been, for more than 25 years—and therefore I feared her vulnerability to attacks from Trump and Fox News.