The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick

May 06, 2010 Erik Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When a friend gave this to me recently, I wasn't sure I would read it. I thought it was too soon for a biography on Obama. But then I realized that it wasn't too soon to talk about his life up to this point. After all, that's not going to change. In addition, when it comes to history, we tend to think the more recent the better, but the fact is that those books written about people or events closer to their time tend to capture nuance in a way the later stuff can't. For instance, Simon Schama's...more When a friend gave this to me recently, I wasn't sure I would read it. I thought it was too soon for a biography on Obama. But then I realized that it wasn't too soon to talk about his life up to this point. After all, that's not going to change. In addition, when it comes to history, we tend to think the more recent the better, but the fact is that those books written about people or events closer to their time tend to capture nuance in a way the later stuff can't. For instance, Simon Schama's book on the French Revolution is superb, and certainly he knew things that earlier writers couldn't know, but as for the feel of the French Revolution, Carlyle and even Dickens must have had a better grasp. And okay, I read it because of my obsession with this guy. I'm from Illinois, so when he won the primary for the Senate, I knew who he was. I have been entranced by this guy from day one. And when he decided to run for prez, I was the first in my town to put up an Obama sign, and because I now live in New York, I was surrounded by Clinton signs. Anyway, the book . . .

Marvelous. Remnick frames the whole story of Obama within the context of racism and civil rights, which was a brilliant choice. I knew the outlines of Obama's life, but I didn't know, in-depth, the details of the life, and they're even more incredible than I'd thought. Obama's also more brilliant than I thought, which is saying something because I thought, and think, he's the smartest person we've had in the White House since Lincoln. My love isn't unconditional: he's certainly disappointed me on a few fronts, but successful politicans compromise, they have to, and compromise leaves parties not fully satisfied. And he's not perfect, but even Lincoln, at the time of his death, was working on a plan to colonize freed slaves in Central America. Still, he's the one person, more than any other, I'd want running my country right now.

As for Remnick: the writing is fluid, smooth, elegant, and the research is breathtaking. He even detailed Obama's mom's dissertation. Given that he's the editor of the NEW YORKER, I can't imagine where he found time to write such a wonderful book. (less)

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Sep 13, 2010 Maureen Flatley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Terrific. One of several definitive books about the President and campaign. Recommend highly. You can never go wrong w/ Remnick's writing.

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Jul 23, 2010 Mary Verdick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-read

Inspirational and Revealing!

Fascinating journey and ascent of a younng black man, who in the beginning seemed to have little going for him. With a brilliant, but self-delusional Kenyan father, who deserted him as a baby and a devoted, but often absent mother, Barack (known as Barry growing up)learned at an early age that he had to more or less shift for himself. Fortunately he met the right people along the way who helped him on his journey, and he didn't waste time feeling sorry for himself. I...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Socraticgadfly rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, politics-public-policy

Still very much worth a read

Remnick does an excellent job of showing that Obama has always been a pragmatist, a conciliator and a neoliberal. (Oh, and in light of BP and Deepwater Horizon and Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar, it's "interesting" that Remnick has nothing to write about an Obama environmental record.) That was all the case in Iowa, January 2008. But, many voters either didn't look deep enough, didn't know to look deep enough, or just made unwarranted assumptions.

That said, ther...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Marti Garlett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An amazing read for people who want to truly -- even if they are not Democrats -- understand our current and, I would say, somewhat Lincolnesque President, although he has not been as tried as Lincoln. Nevertheless, he has been enormously tried as a man of color who didn't really fit into his family or his country. But he has the brilliance of Lincoln and, like Lincoln, is a trained lawyer and an unpopular politician. Why? Well, Lincoln was considered a country bumpkin and Obama a not-born-in-th...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Benjamin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was an excellent political biography. Much in the same vein as Caro's 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson', this book is just as much a biography as it is a synthesis of the events in a life that lead to an ascendency to the Presidency. Much like Johnson, we leave feeling that at this time and place in history, Obama was born to be the President. Also of significance (and particular interest to those who didn't religiously follow the campaign, such as I) is the busting of the myths surrounding Oba...more

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Mar 23, 2011 Caroline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, american-history

I very much doubt there'll be a better biography of Barack Obama, at least not within the next decade or so, because this book is truly excellent. I came away from it not just with a better understanding of Obama, but the civil rights movement and race relations in America in general.

It really clarified my image of Obama as an extraordinary man - not necessarily an extraordinary President, because history will tell on that one, and simply being the first African-American President in no way guar...more

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Dec 13, 2010 Boekenbuzz.nl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

De Brug. Leven en opkomst van Barack Obama vertelt het verhaal van het leven en de verkiezing van de eerste Afro-Amerikaanse president van Amerika. Sinds de val van het communisme in 1991 is er geen enkele gebeurtenis geweest die over de hele wereld zozeer tot de verbeelding heeft gesproken als de verkiezing van Barack Obama. Amerika werd opnieuw het land van de onbegrensde mogelijkheden, van hoop en van openheid. Het bijzondere was dat dit allemaal werd bewerkstelligd door een politicus die nog...more

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Jun 01, 2010 Jim Leffert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This lengthy (591 pages) book tells us in considerable detail all that we already know about the life and election of Obama, with some added information, based on Remnick’s extensive interviewing and research, plus perspective offered by Remnick. Remnick situates Obama’s life and rise to the Presidency within the history of race in America. Obama represents the “Joshua generation”, a generation that missed out on the struggles and heroics of the Civil Rights movement era but having benefited fro...more This lengthy (591 pages) book tells us in considerable detail all that we already know about the life and election of Obama, with some added information, based on Remnick’s extensive interviewing and research, plus perspective offered by Remnick. Remnick situates Obama’s life and rise to the Presidency within the history of race in America. Obama represents the “Joshua generation”, a generation that missed out on the struggles and heroics of the Civil Rights movement era but having benefited from new opportunities, strove to make a mark on contemporary society. For Obama, who grew up in Hawaii with a biracial (Kansas and African) background, identifying himself as African American was a conscious choice. Chicago was where Obama immersed himself—and married into--the urban African American community and solidified his developing identity.

Remnick situates Obama’s remarkable memoir, Dreams of My Father, as successor to a long history of African American literature in which people (Frederic Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Fannie Lou Hamer, and many others) wrote memoirs in which they recounted their life story of slavery and/or persecution and asserted their personhood and identity. Remnick points out that when right wing agitators in 2008 claimed that Obama didn’t really write this book (suggesting that it had been ghost written by William Ayres), they were reviving a 200 year old tradition of skepticism that Negroes were capable of writing eloquently about their lives—the only difference was that escaped slaves’ narratives typically had a preface by a white person testifying to skeptical readers that the person really was the author, whereas Obama, writing at the dawn of the 21st century, was able to omit this preface.

Remnick’s portrait of Obama is of someone who is brilliant and impressive—people who met him kept insisting that he was special--who had outsize ambition that led him, early on, to aspire to higher office. A moderate liberal who was by nature a conciliator, Obama consistently, during his time at Harvard Law School and later as a professor, gained the respect of conservative legal scholars as a liberal who nonetheless respected them and listened to their viewpoints. He was elected editor of the Harvard Law Review with their support and ensured that their scholarly work was published. Later, as a law school professor, he was careful to expose his students to conservative writings in his classes, so that they could grapple with a full range of legal philosophies and opinions. Obama’s notable speech, while a state senator, opposing the Iraq War, was carefully worded and lawyerly—he emphasized that he was not against fighting wars—he was against fighting a stupid war. It must have come as a shock to Obama, despite his realism about politics, to be vilified, once in office, by Republicans as a radical socialist.

Unlike the civil rights leaders of the 60’s and 70’s, preachers and agitators who articulated the grievances of their community, Obama is a mainstream politician. He feels totally at home with white people and appealed to the wider electorate. From the earliest days of his career, he had to contend with people in the African American community who disparaged him for not being black enough. In the section on the 2008 Presidential campaign, Remnick describes Obama’s struggle to woo the white electorate while convincing skeptical black voters that he represented their aspirations and, furthermore, was a realistic option, rather than being a marginal, race-based candidate. The book starts with the Obama’s Selma speech, in which he succeeded in connecting his personal history to the legacy of the civil rights struggle. Remnick recounts how as the campaign progressed, Obama succeeded in pushing aside Hillary Clinton, much to Clinton’s dismay and grievance, even though she had started the race with an enormous reservoir of support in the African-American community.

Remnick acknowledges that besides Martin Luther King, the person who did the most to pave the way for Obama’s election was George W. Bush! Remnick’s book nonetheless ends by celebrating how America took a step forward toward a less racially divided society through this landmark event.
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May 31, 2010 Carol rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This biography of Barack Obama, by the white editor of "The New Yorker", offers a little more detail about the lives of Obama's parents than hitherto discussed, more detail about his schooling, and much more information about his life as a community organizer and state senator in Illinois, and his subsequent political campaigns. His mother achieved a PhD; she is not usually discussed in detail, but she was a courageous, warm and intelligent person. His father had expected a government role on hi...more

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Apr 27, 2010 Blog on Books rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You would have to be living under a rock, as they say, not to have noticed New Yorker editor David Remnick making the rounds of the news-talk shows the last few weeks in support of his new book, ‘The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.’ Remnick has appeared on virtually every show and newspaper column and seemingly for good reason. For as much as there are more Obama books on the market than any first year president in recent memory, ‘The Bridge’ stands out as the one book, save Obama’s o...more You would have to be living under a rock, as they say, not to have noticed New Yorker editor David Remnick making the rounds of the news-talk shows the last few weeks in support of his new book, ‘The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.’ Remnick has appeared on virtually every show and newspaper column and seemingly for good reason. For as much as there are more Obama books on the market than any first year president in recent memory, ‘The Bridge’ stands out as the one book, save Obama’s own ‘Dreams of My Father,’ that does a deep dive into the political past of the nation’s first African-American president and the decisions, factors and historical touchstones that led him to the top job.

In Remnick’s 656-page volume, the author painstakingly goes back and reassembles the now-president’s life in a way that is both personal and political. Remnick portrays the story of a rapid, albeit sometimes random, journey from student life in Hawaii, to his studies at Occidental and Harvard, through the famed community organizing era and ultimately to elected positions in the Illinois state legislature, the U.S. Senate and on to the presidency. At various points in the book, the author is not afraid to point out some of Obama’s lackluster moments (i.e. his sometimes idle days both at the Davis Miner law firm and later in the Illinois State Senate, his drubbing in his first congressional run, etc.) while continuing to focus on the search for identity that Obama may have lacked in the early years of his youth.

Unlike many of the books on the market, Remnick is not obsessed with the historic presidential part of the story (that is saved for the last quarter of the book) but rather looks closely at Obama’s student years, his time at Harvard including his race for and leadership of the Harvard Law Review, his Chicago community alliances (from Bill Ayers to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington) and much of his work in the Illinois State Senate before coming to Washington. Throughout the book, Remnick is front-of-mind conscious as to how race affected Obama’s journey with repeated references to everyone from MLK to John Lewis to Shirley Chisholm. Remnick’s focus on Obama’s race and the issues it elicits, sometimes seems to be in fact, the focal point of the book. (Even the title ‘The Bridge’ of course, has a double meaning, referring both to Obama as well as a reference to the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama that is often seen as the frontline of the battle for racial equality in March of 1965.)

Besides the voluminous interviews and depth of research involved, the strength of Remnick’s book relies on both it’s rather unvarnished view of the Obama history as well as it’s telling of the story from the point of view of many of those closest to the action. The main criticism that seems to be leveled at the book is it’s dryness; it’s ‘court-reporter’ style – a critique we would certainly not dispute. Of course, there will be many books to come on the first African-American president in U.S. history (Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter’s book ‘The Promise’ debuts next month) but to have this kind of extensive tome delivered so early in one’s presidency is either a gift or a sign of our times. Probably both.
Bonus: Here is a link to a great new Q&A with David Remnick from the Seattle Times. Enjoy.(less)

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Apr 19, 2010 Donna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Obama supporters, multi-culturalists, students of the civil rights movement

Shelves: biography-memoir

This is a really good book detailing the life of Barack Obama. Even though many would say that he is over-exposed, I learned alot about him that I hadn't read before. More importantly, I learned about many of his colleagues and friends which helps to put him in context.

Perhaps the most interesting parts of the book for me were the Chicago chapters. I know second-hand some things about the areas in which he worked as a community organizer and know people who know people who know him. I know a lit...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Victoria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Bridge is a very thick book with tons of background on all of the main characters, as well as considerable background of many characters who Barack met along the way from childhood to the Presidency. The main theme running through the book is that of race - that Barack Obama crossed the metaphorical bridge of race by making it to the presidency. Remnick provides considerable background on the civil rights movement, black leaders in Chicago and other political positions, and the role of these...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having already read what was clearly an anti-Obama biography ("The Roots of Obama's Rage," which was very polemic and speculative (in terms of ascertaining why Obama hates America), I was interested in reading a more balanced biography of our president. This lengthy treatment (generally positively reviewed) is panned by it's critics as being "leftist pap." That having been said, my take-away was that if this is an apology for Obama, it certainly didn't make me any more comfortable that he is at...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Brian Ayres rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This biographical analysis of Barack Obama might be better left for the historians of 30 to 50 years from now, but through fresh, detailed reporting, David Remnick pieces together the rise of Obama and his complicated place in the racial history of our country and his relationship with the civil rights movement's ideals, values and still living figures. The back half of the book is a rehash of the 2008 presidential primaries and general election with little in the way of new reporting, but the m...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Evan Leach rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biographies, history, 2010-2019

The Bridge is a well-written, exhaustively researched biography of President Obama. As the title indicates, the book spends a good deal of time discussing the connections between civil rights leaders of the past and Obama's rise to the presidency. I thought that Remnick was at his best in these portions of the book.

This book didn't quite sweep me off my feet like some other presidential biographies, such as McCullough's John Adams or Maraniss' First in His Class. I never felt like I was reading...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: july-aug-2010

Most reviewers were pleasantly surprised to find that anyone could find anything new to say about the president, since he is one of the most scrutinized people on the planet and has already written two memoirs. But Remnick pulls off The Bridge, in part, through innovative and exhaustive research. Several critics remarked how Remnick's reporting expanded their views of the Obama of Dreams From my Father; others were grateful for the author's elucidation of the president's crucial years in Chicago...more

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May 06, 2010 Tad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What I enjoyed most about this book was perspective. I've read Obama's two books and I mostly enjoyed them. My general feeling is it's WAY too early to have a biography written about Obama but this book is an exception to that thought (in my mind). If you've read Dreams of My Father you probably feel you know quite a lot about his background. What you don't learn is anything about his mother and very little about his father. You have no idea really how they came to know one another nor do you le...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Brad Hodges rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Bridge is, as the subtitle suggests, at the life and rise of Barack Obama, and at times it's a great read. But it is a long book, with several tangents that sometimes seem appropriate and sometimes seems like the author is being paid by the word.

David Remnick, the editor The New Yorker, starts the book with a look at Obama's parents, in particular his father, a man who had several families and ended up embittered and impotent with anger. Obama was determined not to repeat his mistakes. Remni...more The Bridge is, as the subtitle suggests, at the life and rise of Barack Obama, and at times it's a great read. But it is a long book, with several tangents that sometimes seem appropriate and sometimes seems like the author is being paid by the word.

David Remnick, the editor The New Yorker, starts the book with a look at Obama's parents, in particular his father, a man who had several families and ended up embittered and impotent with anger. Obama was determined not to repeat his mistakes. Remnick also details Obama's mother's family, and his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, is presented as a valuable part of Obama's upbringing. I was particularly impressed that Dunham, in an attempt to make sure that Obama connected with his African heritage, connected him with an older black mentor while he was a teenager in Hawaii.

Much of Obama's childhood story is well known today, especially in his own book, Dreams from My Father, but I found this the best part of Remnick's book. Partly this is due to Obama being exactly my age (he is a few months younger), and so I was able to relate to what was going in the culture of America at the time. The chapters about his college years resonated me with, especially this one: "Among Obama's friends--among so many young people going to college in the seventies and eighties--there was a feeling of belatedness, a sense that political activism had lost most of its energy. They had come along too late for the March on Washington, Black Power, the Stonewall riots, the antiwar and women's-liberation demonstrations. Rightly or not, many of them felt they had the desire but not a cause."

The other great part about these early chapters is the almost insane proposition that someone with Obama's background, a middle-class mixed-race boy from Hawaii, who spent a good chunk of his boyhood in Indonesia, could one day be president. Consider when Obama and his black friends in high school used to gather and talk about things: "They even discussed whether there would be a black President in their lifetime--and they decided it wasn't possible."

I was also interested to read about how Obama flipped a switch after his rather lackadaisical early college years, after which he went into his "ascetic" mode, finishing school at Columbia, and working a variety of jobs in New York before moving to Chicago to be a community organizer. The book covers his decision to go to Harvard Law, where he became the first black president of the Law Review, and then going back to Chicago where he started his career in politics.

Remnick goes on a long riff about the history of Chicago politics from the Daley years through the Harold Washington years. Washington was a hero of Obama's, and he thought he might like to be mayor one day. But he ended up on an ill-conceived plan to unseat incumbent Representative Bobby Rush, who was a Black Panther, and failed, which perhaps taught him important lessons (Bill Clinton being turned out of the governor's mansion in Arkansas after one term was equally important for him). We then follow Obama in his run for Senate, in which he had some incredible luck (his first opponent had to withdraw after a sex scandal, and he ended up facing the carpetbagging Alan Keyes, a fringe candidate).

Remnick's chapter on Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention, which made him a star, is well covered, as his process of deciding to run for President. The campaign chapters didn't seem to me to cover anything new, and I'm sure there is more than one book that dissects this campaign more thoroughly than Remnick does.

Remnick is clearly an admirer of his subject, and his liberal politics shine through. He scornfully dismisses birthers and those who tried to tie Obama to Bill Ayers. He has some really harsh words about Jerome Corsi, the guy who "Swift Boated" John Kerry but tried and failed to do that to Obama with the book Obama Nation. But he covers the relationship between Obama and Jeremiah Wright with clear eyes, and several times recognizes what is perhaps Obama's greatest flaw--his ego. But, of course, can anyone run for President without having a tremendous ego?

Some of the branches that Remnick takes don't strike me as being as relevant to his story, such as a brief biography of Jesse Jackson, or a detailed description of Frederick Douglass' first visit to Lincoln's White House. It's all interesting, but stops the narrative in its tracks.

The title The Bridge refers to the bridge in Selma, Alabama, in which civil rights protesters, led by Martin Luther King Jr., marched in 1965. John Lewis, who marched on that day, and is now a Congressman from Atlanta, said "Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma." Reading about the inauguration, when Lewis, the last living man who spoke at the March on Washington in August of 1963, sitting right up front. "Obama [in his office] also displayed a framed cover of Life magazine from March, 1965; it showed a long line of demonstrators, led by John Lewis, about to confront the Alabama state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Lewis had signed and framed the cover and had given it to Obama as a gift. Now, at the luncheon following the swearing-in ceremony, Lewis approached Obama with a sheet of paper and, to mark the occasion, he asked him to sign it. The forty-fourth President of the United States wrote, 'Because of you, John, Barack Obama.'"(less)

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May 20, 2012 Jennifer Nanek rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a good book, it took me two years to finish it as I knew Obamas story already, so this was not that compelling. The book got better when Obama started doing better as president..LOL

The book is very thorough in its topic, the author did good w/ his research. The point of this book is that Obama is Joshua to Dr. King's Moses essentially, that Obama while he stands on the shoulders of civil rights warriors he is his own man w/ his own way of doing things.

This is good in that some politicia...more

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Apr 30, 2010 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: presidents

I very much enjoyed this book. It's the only book I've read about Obama, and it was extremely informative and interesting, particularly the first 3 parts (of 5). Because Remnick went through a great deal of trouble to interview everyone he could from Obama's past, all the way back to his childhood, he provides a pretty comprehensive picture of the young Obama.

The last 2 sections of the book, however, were dedicated to the Presidential campaign and the earliest days of the 44th presidency. Perha...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Breanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book took me longer to read than any I have picked up in a long time. Usually I could not put a book down, but this one I almost had to, just to digest the information. There is an excellent backdrop of American history in this book, especially with the civil rights movement. There were quite a few things I learned about reading this book. I think that anyone could enjoy this, regardless of your personal opinion of Barack Obama, or your political beliefs. It was an amazing book for laying o...more

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Jan 02, 2011 Katina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

When I selected this book off the "new" shelf at the library, I wondered if I could possibly get through it. It is not short. I also wondered how much I cared to read more about Obama, since I've read both of his books. To my surprise, this was utterly captivating, very well-written, and quite nuanced. That's not to say that Remnick isn't an Obama fan, but this book captures very admirable parts of Obama's life and work and other crap that we all expect from all people, especially politicans.

Thi...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arts-and-historical

No story has been more central to America’s history this century than the rise of Barack Obama, and until now, no journalist or historian has written a book that fully investigates the circumstances and experiences of Obama’s life or explores the ambition behind his rise. Those familiar with Obama’s own best-selling memoir or his campaign speeches know the touchstones and details that he chooses to emphasize, but now—from a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significance of unfold...more No story has been more central to America’s history this century than the rise of Barack Obama, and until now, no journalist or historian has written a book that fully investigates the circumstances and experiences of Obama’s life or explores the ambition behind his rise. Those familiar with Obama’s own best-selling memoir or his campaign speeches know the touchstones and details that he chooses to emphasize, but now—from a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significance of unfolding events is without peer—we 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 of Obama’s tragic father, a brilliant economist who abandoned his 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 Obama to the social tensions and intellectual currents that 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 man created himself first as a community organizer in Chicago, an experience 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 Obama’s political career against the galvanizing intersection of race and politics in Chicago’s history, Remnick shows us how that city’s complex racial legacy would make Obama’s 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 story—from both sides—of his confrontation with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. By looking at Obama’s 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 Obama’s 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.(less)

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Dec 31, 2011 Amr rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, obama, politics, united-states

I've read quite a number of books about Obama, from the ones that were available during the 2008 campaign like David Mendell's "Obama: from Promise to Power" to the ones covering his first year in office like Richard Wolffe's "Revival", Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars" and Jonathon Alter's "The Promise", not to mention Obama's two books. I list these books to brag but rather to show how David Remnick's book "The Bridge" is different.
Even though Remnick's book goes through all the events of Obama's...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Patricia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

This was an excellent biography that revealed many different facets of the man who is our president. David Remnick's research is comprehensive. He did not shy away from reporting what some of Obama's detractors have to say, but clearly Obama has made more friends than enemies among the people he has met directly and/or befriended. I was particularly interested in his early life as a black child raised by white people-- his grandparents. Because I have two adopted African grandsons, I enjoyed the...more

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May 13, 2010 Katharine Watt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an absolutely must-read, for anyone interested in the people, cultures, and life events that shaped Barack Obama and led him to become the compelling candidae that won the U.S. presidency in 2008. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, has done a masterful job of researching exhaustively and weaving together the strands of Obama's like to provide a fascinating and evenhanded picture that is the first character study (more than a bio) of this relatively young man. Before, we heard from...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Richard Phinney rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A fine biography held together a little too tightly by the thread of Obama's links to the leadership of the civil rights movement. One of the most male-centric books since the Hobbit, however, and most alarming is the virtual dismissal of the roles of Michelle Obama (who comes across more as a nagging, sceptical spouse than as an critical figure in Obama's rise) and Oprah Winfrey, who herself paved the way for Obama, and whose endorsement during the primaries was a pivotal and telling moment. Bu...more

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May 24, 2010 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 08, 2013 Joseph Young rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A look at Obama and black politics throughout America's history. Much of the first part of the book seemed to draw from Obama's first book, Dreams from my Father. (I haven't yet read the Audacity of Hope). The narrator of this book did not have the same energy Barack took with his, and the book comes out more from third-party perspectives. This book ultimately becomes overly repetitive, relying more on biographies of famous black activists, than talking about Obama. The books are very focused on...more

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7927454-the-bridge?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360571699l/7927454.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7927454-the-bridge?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick[/url]

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

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The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

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