The book has a rich account of Obama's childhood and student years, and includes interviews with people, such as Obama's college roommates, who shunned the media freak show in 2008, but were willing to talk to Remnick, and even to share with him their old, well-written letters and short stories (!) from Obama in Chicago.
The book doesn't dramatically change the public portrait of Obama, but it deepens it, and and is the strongest effort since Dreams from My Father to put him in a kind of narrative context. The narrative doesn't always follow Dreams; notably, it's far clearer on Obama's ambition, which had become clear before he left Chicago for Harvard, to run for office. Read an excerpt on how Obama became Obama by walking through Central Park at Politico
Friday, March 26, 2010
New Obama Book: The Bridge
A new book about Obama by David Remnick (read his latest column on Obama in the New Yorker) gets a positive review. I'm looking forward to this book:
