The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

No story has been more central to Americas history this century than the rise of Barack Obama, and until now, no journalist or historian has written a book thatfully investigates the circumstances and experiences of Obamas life or explores the ambition behind his rise.Those familiar with Obamas own best-selling memoiror his campaign speeches know the touchstones and details that he chooses to emphasize, but nowfrom a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significanceof unfolding events is without peerwe have a portrait, at once masterly and fresh,nuanced and unexpected, of a young man in search of himself,and of a rising politician determined to become the first African-American president. The Bridge offers the most complete account yet ofObamas tragic father, a brilliant economist who abandonedhis family and ended his life as a beaten man;of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham,who had a child as a teenager and then built her career as an anthropologist living and studying in Indonesia;and of the succession of elite institutions that first exposed Obamato the social tensions and intellectual currentsthat would force him to imagine and fashion an identity for himself. Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself,David Remnick allows us to see how a rootless, unaccomplished, and confused young mancreated himself first as a community organizer in Chicago, anexperience that would not only shape his urge to work in politics but give him a home and a community, and that would propel him to Harvard Law School, where his sense of a greater mission emerged. Deftly setting Obamas political career against the galvanizing intersection of race and politics in Chicagos history, Remnick shows us how that citys complex racial legacy would make Obamas forays into politics a source of controversy and bare-knuckle tactics: his clashes with older black politicians in the Illinois State Senate, his disastrous decision to challenge the former Black Panther Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000, the sex scandals that would decimate his more experienced opponents in the 2004 Senate race, and the storyfrom both sidesof his confrontation with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.By looking at Obamas political rise through the prism of our racial history, Remnick gives us the conflicting agendas of black politicians: the dilemmas of men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and Joseph Lowery,heroes of the civil rights movement, who are forced to reassess old loyalties and understand the priorities of a new generation of African-American leaders. The Bridge revisits the American drama of race, from slavery to civil rights, and makes clear how Obamas quest is not just his own but is emblematic of a nation where destiny is defined by individuals keen to imagine a future that is different from the reality of their current lives.