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A review by jackwwang
The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick
3.0
Be fully warned, this book is not about the Obama administration, but rather the events in his life leading up to it. To be fair though, a more careful dissection of the title would have clarified the subject for me.
Remnick offers a sprawling, detailed, and almost obsessive/compulsive chronicle of the "life and rise" of Obama. I thought I'd enjoy Remnicks writerly sensibilities after enjoying his podcasterly sensibilities as the host of the NYer podcast and his editorial sensibilities for the magazine I have such a spot in my heart for. However as a chronicler, I found him too obsessed with details.
Remnick starts 2 generations removed from the subject, with his Kenyan and Kansasan grandparents, and painstakingly works his way to the subject that by the time we get to Obama himself in earnest we're almost 100 pages in. It's obvious that he has a keen knack for detailed research, but it's less clear that he has a natural ability to synthesize research into compelling stories and arcs.
What we end up with is a detailed account of Obama's family history and biography. Perhaps the most interesting to me was the account of Obama's childhood in Hawaii. Here we delve into the formation of his racial identity, and the reader gets a sense of how his confidence, preternatural skills of facilitation and calm may stem from a atypical path to African American identity. Unlike most other American blacks who grow up in the thick of prejudice, bigotry, and often violence in explicit and hurtful terms, Obama was sheltered from much of the explicitly harm aspects of his identity in a relatively harmonious Hawaiian society. He also came to his identity as African American on his own under his own terms; it was something he sought out and molded as an adolescent, unlike so many others whom it was thrust upon. There's lots of fascinating armchair psychology to be done here, but I'll stop here.
The chronical of his meteoric political ascent is also interesting, but I was more captivated by his intellectual formation. Stories of his self-imposed academic rigor starting in the middle of college, his interactions with peers and teachers at Harvard, and formation of his political sensibility as a community organizer all have delectable detail for any politics nerd. When it actually came to his political ascent, the story made a turn for the unreal. Looking back it's still hard to believe he rose so fast so quickly in politics, perhaps even more surprising that (at least IMHO) he did so well in his presidency given his such quick rise and relative greenness at national politics when elected.
If you don't mind length and details, and wish to understand Obama the person better, especially aspects of his racial identity, it's a good read.
Remnick offers a sprawling, detailed, and almost obsessive/compulsive chronicle of the "life and rise" of Obama. I thought I'd enjoy Remnicks writerly sensibilities after enjoying his podcasterly sensibilities as the host of the NYer podcast and his editorial sensibilities for the magazine I have such a spot in my heart for. However as a chronicler, I found him too obsessed with details.
Remnick starts 2 generations removed from the subject, with his Kenyan and Kansasan grandparents, and painstakingly works his way to the subject that by the time we get to Obama himself in earnest we're almost 100 pages in. It's obvious that he has a keen knack for detailed research, but it's less clear that he has a natural ability to synthesize research into compelling stories and arcs.
What we end up with is a detailed account of Obama's family history and biography. Perhaps the most interesting to me was the account of Obama's childhood in Hawaii. Here we delve into the formation of his racial identity, and the reader gets a sense of how his confidence, preternatural skills of facilitation and calm may stem from a atypical path to African American identity. Unlike most other American blacks who grow up in the thick of prejudice, bigotry, and often violence in explicit and hurtful terms, Obama was sheltered from much of the explicitly harm aspects of his identity in a relatively harmonious Hawaiian society. He also came to his identity as African American on his own under his own terms; it was something he sought out and molded as an adolescent, unlike so many others whom it was thrust upon. There's lots of fascinating armchair psychology to be done here, but I'll stop here.
The chronical of his meteoric political ascent is also interesting, but I was more captivated by his intellectual formation. Stories of his self-imposed academic rigor starting in the middle of college, his interactions with peers and teachers at Harvard, and formation of his political sensibility as a community organizer all have delectable detail for any politics nerd. When it actually came to his political ascent, the story made a turn for the unreal. Looking back it's still hard to believe he rose so fast so quickly in politics, perhaps even more surprising that (at least IMHO) he did so well in his presidency given his such quick rise and relative greenness at national politics when elected.
If you don't mind length and details, and wish to understand Obama the person better, especially aspects of his racial identity, it's a good read.