It also discusses some personal aspects of her life and career, including her feelings towards President Barack Obama following her 2008 presidential campaign loss to him.

[1] On April 4, 2013, Simon & Schuster, her previous publisher, announced that Clinton had signed with them for this new work, with a target publication date of June 2014.

[2] Lawyer Robert Barnett handled the negotiations from Clinton's side; the financial terms of any advance or royalties were not publicly disclosed.

In the book, Clinton frames the foreign policy situations encountered during her tenure as a series of hard choices, especially those involving the Middle East and the Arab Spring, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Russia.

[12] Clinton sometimes delves into disagreements within the Obama administration and where she stood, such as her losing the argument to arm moderate elements of the Syrian opposition.

[13] The book also addresses the disappointment of her 2008 loss, and for the first time fully recants her 2002 vote on the Iraq War Resolution that cost her in that campaign, writing that "I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had.

"[12][16] The book concludes with some general thoughts about her visions for America going forward,[12] but it shed no light on whether she would run for president in 2016, saying only, "[t]he time for another hard choice will come soon.

[23] Other events, sometimes multiple per day,[8] included a public discussion forum in Chicago with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton administration aide.

[8] It wore a shirt with the message "Another Clinton in the White House is Nuts" and was accompanied by other staffers handing out sheets with anti-Clinton talking points.

[30] The length of the promotional tour recalled her heavy travel schedule as Secretary of State,[30] and largely put to rest questions about her health that had circulated among some since her concussion and blood clot treatment in late 2012.

[8][32][33] Writing for The New York Times, longtime book critic Michiko Kakutani said that the volume is better than Clinton's previous memoir and that Hard Choices "turns out to be a subtle, finely calibrated work that provides a portrait of the former secretary of state and former first lady as a heavy-duty policy wonk.

"[34] Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times assessed it as "a richly detailed and compelling chronicle of Clinton's role in the foreign initiatives and crises that defined the first term of the Obama administration ... told from the point of view of a policy wonk.

"[14] Michael Scherer of Time magazine declared, "This is a campaign book, written by a candidate (via her speechwriters), processed through a political machine, and delivered to the public with the contradictory goals of depicting the author as a decisive leader and not betraying any evidence of leadership that would turn a voter off.

"[36] Ed Pilkington of The Guardian wrote that it was a less overt campaign manifesto than Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope had been in 2006, but "still manages to adroitly position Clinton for a 2016 presidential bid.

[17] In actuality, Simon & Schuster said that it during its first week on sale, it sold over 100,000 copies,[38] a figure supported by extrapolation of the underlying Nielsen BookScan data.

[40][41] In the fourth week, sales declined again and the book surrendered the top spot on the Times Best Seller list to Edward Klein's Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas, a lurid and lightly sourced account of purported rivalries between the two couples and within each marriage.

[40] On its initial release date of June 10, it was published in Canada, Great Britain, Australia, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and France.

[40] A Spanish language translation, Decisiones difíciles, was released on June 24 in the U.S.[51] Altogether, foreign rights to the book were sold in sixteen countries.

[52] While also available in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Hard Choices was effectively banned in mainland China as publishers there declined to purchase either the translation or English-language distribution rights for the book.

[56] The paperback version also has a new cover, in color, in which Clinton is angled away from the camera, turning her head and smiling slightly, while dressed in a blue, collared shirt and wearing bold silver earrings.