The Obamas attempts to provide an emotional history of the Obama marriage. Jodi Kantor talks about their lives and their innermost thoughts as if she had been there, but in the tradition of such books, doesn't directly attribute her information to specific people. Michelle, she says, doesn't believe in government very much. She refused to participate in many political events, and refused to have her time frittered away to no real purpose by the disorganized West Wing. She insisted on having a family life and some control of her schedule. She was not an admirer of Robert Gibbs and Rahm Emmanuel. She was hard on her husband, sometimes too hard, and is like a drill sergeant with her kids. She is hyper-organized but also very warm and funny and popular. She prefers to visit small groups that other big shots don't visit and to visit with children. She tells it like it is. And when her husband turned 50, when he was so down it looked like he'd never get back up, she gave a loving speech at his birthday party and danced with him till dawn. But along with the facts, Jodi Kantor is not shy about dishing up a whole lot of her own conclusions.

I have seen the author on many TV shows, and I don't like her at all. I think her descriptions of the Obama's character and marriage are facile, flip and sometimes offensive. Jodi Kantor doesn't hesitate to draw grandiose conclusions about her subjects on the basis of gossip and a bit of hard fact. She does so with no apparent appreciation for the limitations of her method. As Michelle Obama points out, nobody on the outside can truly understand another couple's relationship. Jodi Kantor would have impressed me much more if she had remembered that she was speculating as much as reporting.