Michelle: A Biography
Michelle: A Biography (Hardcover) by Liza Mundy
25.00
She can be funny and sharp-tongued, warm and
blunt, empathic and demanding. Who is the woman Barack Obama calls "the
boss"? In Michelle, Washington Post writer Liza Mundy paints a revealing and
intimate portrait, taking us inside the marriage of the most dynamic couple in
politics today. She shows how well they complement each other: Michelle, the
highly organized, sometimes intimidating, list-making pragmatist; Barack, the
introspective political charmer who won't pick up his socks but shoots for the
stars. Their relationship, like those of many couples with two careers and two
children, has been so strained at times that he has had to persuade her to support
his climb up the political ladder. And you can't blame her for occasionally
regretting it: In this campaign, it is Michelle who has absorbed much of the
skepticism from voters about Obama. One conservative magazine put her on the
cover under the headline "Mrs. Grievance."
Michelle's story carries with it all the extraordinary
achievements and lingering pain of America in the post-civil rights era. She
grew up on the south side of Chicago, the daughter of a city worker and a
stay-at-home mom in a neighborhood rocked by white flight. She was admitted to
Princeton amid an angry debate about affirmative action and went on to Harvard
Law School, where she was more comfortable doing pro-bono work for the poor
than gunning for awards with the rest of her peers. She became a corporate
lawyer, then left to train community leaders. She is modern in her tastes but
likes to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Brady Bunch.
In this carefully reported biography, drawing upon interviews
with more than one hundred people, including one with Michelle herself, Mundy
captures the complexity of this remarkable woman and the remarkable life she
has lived