Sneak Peek At Hillary Clinton's New Book
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a new book out entitled "Hard Choices" which will be on store shelves Tuesday.
It is published by Simon and Schuster; a division of CBS. CBS News was able to buy a copy of the book in advance.
The book begins with imagery of Clinton laying down in the backseat of a minivan in 2008, trying to evade reporters on her way to a secret meeting with Barack Obama, the man who just defeated her in the in the democratic primaries.
Clinton wrote that the two buried the hatchet over a bottle of chardonnay at a mutual friends' home in California.
Clinton also describes her feelings about Obama's offer to be Secretary of State and how she initially turned it down.
Click here to watch Summer Knowles's report.
"I wanted to go back to the Senate and my work for New York," she wrote.
She later reconsidered her position when when she though "suppose I had been elected president and wanted Barack Obama to serve as my Secretary of State?"
Her overall impression of President Obama was complimentary, which can't be said for Russian President Vladamir Putin who she says
"proved over time to be thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism."
She describes former Chinese president Hu Jintao as someone who "seemed to me more like an aloof chairman of the board than a hands-on CEO."
In addition to her impressions of world leaders Clinton, for the first time, details hot button issues like the high stakes disagreement with President Obama over Syria and how she she tried to convince him to "vet, train and equip moderate opposition fighters."
She wrote that Mr. Obama "worried that arming the rebels was not likely to be enough to drive Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power."
The more than 600 page book also touches on a range of other topics from her pushing President Obama to end the U.S. embargo on Cuba to her biggest regret of not being able to bring back the diplomats who lost their lives in Benghazi.
There are some lighter moments in her book as well.
She writes about vice presdient Joe Biden's jokes, the time she greeted the French president and lost her shoe in the process and even describes her tricks to staying awake on very long, world trips.
As for the highly anticipated question of whether she will be running for president in 2016? Well, toward the end of the book she addresses it, readers will just have to wait until Tuesday to find out what she said.
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