Renegade: The Making of a President
by Richard Wolffe
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard WolffeEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-02
ISBN: 0307463125
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Crown
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780307463128
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Renegade: The Making of a President
Book Review: Renegade: the Prescience of a Reporter
Summary: 5 Stars
When Barack Obama suggested to Richard Wolffe that he write a book about the Obama campaign and the 2008 election, Wolffe dismissed the idea, noting "There's too much coverage....People are consuming everything about the election." (p. 330) That's true and indeed, there is not much new to be discovered in this book about the events that led up to President Obama's election. But musicians often say that the music occurs between the notes, and so too, the "real story" of the Obama campaign happened between or around the events, during those moments when important choices are made, when tears are shed, or during philosophical conversations on a bus in the middle of the night.
Wolffe attempts (successfully, I think) to illuminate those moments between the events, when Barack Obama's character is revealed through his decision-making and through his interactions with the people around him. It's a tough job. Wolffe walks the thin line between being too analytic and impersonal and collapsing into soap opera. His simple and straightforward writing style helps to keep him on the straight and narrow in this regard, never slipping into a gossipy tone, even with the personal material, and never sounding bombastic in his analysis.
Wolffe's story about traveling with Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency betrays a surprising humility on the part of the author. Given the unprecedented access he had to the candidate during the entire campaign, I imagine the temptation would be great to write a Barack and Me kind of memoir. But he succeeds in making himself almost completely invisible until the Afterword, when he talks about the similarities between his and Obama's upbringing. (It's a very touching and appropriate ending to the story.) Instead, he focuses on Obama's character and personality--how he came to be the person he is today. I came away from the book with a clearer understanding of the philosophical ground upon which Barack Obama stands.
I originally wrote this review about a year ago, not bothering to submit it to the website. When I went back at the beginning of 2010 and reread it, I was struck by my original closing line: "He [Obama] will disappoint both conservatives and progressives, because, as Wolffe makes clear, he is not about pleasing one side or the other, but about finding common ground between them." The temptation is to applaud my own prescience but really, the credit belongs to Wolffe for writing a book which so accurately predicts the particular challenges of the Obama presidency. That makes it a very important, and useful, book.
Summary of Renegade: The Making of a President
Before the White House and Air Force One, before the TV ads and the enormous rallies, there was the real Barack Obama: a man wrestling with the momentous decision to run for the presidency, feeling torn about leaving behind a young family, and figuring out how to win the biggest prize in politics.This book is the previously untold and epic story of how a political newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into the world's most powerful leader. But it is also a uniquely intimate portrait of the person behind the iconic posters and the Secret Service code name Renegade.
Drawing on a dozen unplugged interviews with the candidate and president, as well as twenty-one months covering his campaign as it traveled from coast to coast, Richard Wolffe answers the simple yet enduring question about Barack Obama: Who is he?
Based on Wolffe's unprecedented access to Obama, Renegade reveals the making of a president, both on the campaign trail and before he ran for high office. It explains how the politician who emerged in an extraordinary election learned the personal and political skills to succeed during his youth and early career. With cool self-discipline, calculated risk taking, and simple storytelling, Obama developed the strategies he would need to survive the onslaught of the Clintons and John McCain, and build a multimillion-dollar machine to win a historic contest.
In Renegade, Richard Wolffe shares with us his front-row seat at Obama's announcement to run for president on a frigid day in Springfield, and his victory speech on a warm night in Chicago. We fly on the candidate's plane and ride in his bus on an odyssey across a country in crisis; stand next to him at a bar on the night he secures the nomination; and are backstage as he delivers his convention speech to a stadium crowd and a transfixed national audience. From a teacher's office in Iowa to the Oval Office in Washington, we see and hear Barack Obama with an immediacy and honesty never witnessed before.
Renegade provides not only an account of Obama's triumphs, but also examines his many personal and political trials. We see Obama wrestling with race and politics, as well as his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We see him struggling with life as a presidential candidate, a campaign that falters for most of its first year, and his reaction to a surprise defeat in the New Hampshire primary. And we see him relying on his personal experience, as well as meticulous polling, to pass the presidential test in foreign and economic affairs.
Renegade is an essential guide to understanding President Barack Obama and his trusted inner circle of aides and friends. It is also a riveting and enlightening first draft of history and political psychology.
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