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The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama Paperback – January 11, 2011

4.5 out of 5 stars 221

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National Bestseller

In this nuanced and complex portrait of Barack Obama, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Remnick offers a thorough, intricate, and riveting account of the unique experiences that shaped our nation’s first African American president.
 
Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself, Remnick explores the elite institutions that first exposed Obama to social tensions, and the intellectual currents that contributed to his identity. Using America’s racial history as a backdrop for Obama’s own story, Remnick further reveals how an initially rootless and confused young man built on the experiences of an earlier generation of black leaders to become one of the central figures of our time.
 
Masterfully written and eminently readable,
The Bridge is destined to be a lasting and illuminating work for years to come, by a writer with an unparalleled gift for revealing the historical significance of our present moment.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brilliantly constructed, flawlessly written….A near-definitive study of Obama.” –The Los Angeles Times

“If you care about American politics, you have to read
The Bridge.” –Salon

"Superb. . . . Remnick is a master blender of history, reporting and narrative.” —
The Seattle Times

“Insight[ful] and nuance[d]. . . .Writing with emotional precision and a sure knowledge of politics, Mr. Remnick situates Mr. Obama’s career firmly within a historical context.” –Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times
 
“There are a few people of such skill that envy gives way to admiration, and one is left feeling not hostility but respect. Remnick is one of those exceptional practitioners.”–
Newsweek
 
“His work will serve as a building block for all future works on Obama. . . .Lovely and assured.” –
Entertainment Weekly
 
“Engaging. . . .Sparkling.” –
San Francisco Chronicle
 
“An expansive work. . . .Recounting a pivotal March 2007 speech in Selma, Remnick writes that Obama’s words were ‘at once personal, tribal, national and universal.’ The same can be said of
The Bridge.” –Time
 
“An insightful, nuanced look at the making of the 44th president, placing his career in the context of history.” –
The Chicago Tribune
 
“Absorbing and seminal. . . .Remnick is the most gifted and versatile journalist in America. . . .
The Bridge is the first truly great biography of the man in all his promise and complexities.” –San Antonio Express-News
 
“Remnick deserves credit for telling Obama’s story more completely than others, for lending a reporter’s zeal to the task, for not ducking the discussion of race and for peeling back several layers of the onion that is Barack Obama.” –Gwen Ifill,
The Washington Post
 
“What Remnick brings to a complex story are the tools of an exceptional reporter: persistence, curiosity, insight. . . .Rich in reflections and refractions.” –Bloomberg.com
 
“Compelling. . . .A living metaphor for an increasingly diverse America. . . .Remnick is one of the finest journalists in America, and has delivered a thorough, well-crafted early entry in what is sure to be a long list of Obama biographies.” –
St. Petersburg Times
 
“[Remnick] manages to mine this young president’s familiar story—the absent Kenyan father, the itinerant and idealistic young white mother, a childhood of wandering from Hawaii to Indonesia and back again—and find new insights.” –
The Christian Science Monitor
 
“Insightful, [a] valuable book. . . .Remnick places Obama’s story squarely in the framework of America’s civil rights struggle.” –
The New Statesman
 
“Masterful, absorbing. . . .A splendid synthesis, an argument for [Remnick’s] reporting gifts. . . .For those interested in race as a social construct,
The Bridge is essential reading.” –The Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“The book’s strengths should appeal to readers of all political stripes: a real depth of reporting and the elegant grace of Remnick’s literary style. . . .The reader is left with a nuanced account of our president’s self-crafted development.” –
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
 
“A lively and enjoyable biography that is likely to remain definitive. . . .Remnick should already be planning a sequel.” –
The Washington Monthly

About the Author

David Remnick was a reporter for The Washington Post for ten years, including four in Moscow. He joined The New Yorker as a writer in 1992 and has been the magazine’s editor since 1998. His previous book, King of the World, a biography of Muhammad Ali, was selected by Time as the top nonfiction book of the year. Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire won a Pulitzer Prize.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 037570230X
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (January 11, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 704 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780375702303
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375702303
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.44 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.34 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 221

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
221 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2010
Barack Obama is not a saint. He is not a Muslim. He is not someone who faked his birth certificate. He is, like his mixture of race, an opportunist who bridges problems by finding painstakingly common ground. He also embellishes his life story in his autobiography.

Obama is an extroverted introvert. He is also an outlier - defined as someone who owes his success because of his birth, the shoulders he has stood upon and hard work.

Obama was born between two parents with doctorates. He lived in Indonesia and went to private Catholic schools. While in Indonesia he was also home schooled with his mother who woke him up every day at 4 AM. He then went to his birthplace in Hawaii to join his loving white grandparents. They sent him to the most exclusive private school in Hawaii. Hawaii has a codified culture of a lack of prejudice and Obama was able to socially grow during his teens without the prejudice of the mainland.

He has never denied or rejected that affirmative action got him into Ivy League Columbia and Harvard Law School. His style of compromise led him to be a member of the Harvard Law Review and later as it's president.

When he left Harvard he wanted only one thing - to be the President of the United States.

Every move he made after that was calculating. He rejected the Moses generation of the civil rights leaders and coined the term of being the Joshua generation. He did not join up to be part of the Chicago Machine of politics nor did he alienate him self from it. He first ran for the state legislature and won. Because he rejected the black and white nature of ideology he ran for Congress and lost to a former Black Panther in 2000. He has been noted by friends and enemies he never has made a mistake twice.

When he ran for the Senate, he had already extensively traveled around the southern part of the state. He coldly calculated that if a) he could register enough blacks, b) appeal to white liberals and split the southern Illinois vote he would win. He won the primary by doing so. He also was lucky that his Republican candidate had to resign his candidancy. He also was fortunate that Illinois has had a history of electing non-white candidates. He also won a break when he was selected to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic convention and stole the show the same way Mario Coumo did in 1984.

When he joined the senate he was bored, but understood that building relationship between Democrats and Republicans was something he had the innate skill to do. He also knew that timing is everything. With wide spread dissatisfaction of W, a country not wanting a legacy of a two decade propensity of electing a family, and his celebrity status gave him the green light to run for the presidency.

Along the way, he would continue to be a pragmatist. His pastor, who nobly served in Vietnam and helped him become black, was taken out of context as an extremist, he pushed him away from his storied announcement where Lincoln announced his candidancy almost a century and a half later.

Obama is probably the most read President since Lincoln and Kennedy. He used his extensive reading to build a mythology as a bridge between the Moses and Joshua generation. Where he lacked the experience of being black, he counter balanced it with reading what it was like to be black from Frederick Douglas, to DuBois, to MKK and Malcolm X. He also used that reading to build a narrative to bridge black history with white, liberal sympathy using biblical terms.

Obama is an extroverted introvert. His success in campaigning was his oratory ability. His mixed record in the White House is his determination to not lead, but to find the single strand of compromise. It has been said that Kennedy's motivation was not to be dumb. LBJ's motivation was not to be a coward. BOH's motivation seems to be a Quixote-esk desire to be all things to all people. Ronald Reagan ran for President so he could change the world. JFK, LBJ and BOH were all motivated by trying to fill a void in their lives. Reagan had no such hole. He did his job for 8 years and was led by what he believed in. After his tenure was up, he was more than happy to go back home, neither more or less fulfilled, then when he entered office.

David Remnick has been criticized for having a man crush on Barack Obama. Maybe he does. But his book, was painstakingly researched, with first hand verbal accounts of his life and he is quick to differentiate the Obama myth from reality. Few people have the ability or motivation to become a leader of the free world. I found his book to be a repudiation of Obama's self described journey and an historical first hand book to understand our current President.

For this reason I recommend this book with five stars. In future generations, this piece of prose, will likely be the foundation for future generations to undertand Obama's rise to success and his yet undetermined success as a President in the most trying times since FDR.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2010
Despite the fact that President Obama might be the best known living human, only two general categories of books have previously appeared about him. The first type has been shoddily whipped together by journalists and is usually little more than a 300 page magazine article providing the general outline of the election. While entertaining, the de minimus research means that beyond one or two added details (probably about Reille Hunter), these works are usually little more than unoriginal and unsourced recapitulations of a tale that has been told hundreds of times on the front pages of every newspaper in the country. The other sort has been written by supporters or opponents of Obama; the strong bias of these works usually makes them appealing only to close-minded partisans.

Dreams From My Father, while a more revealing book than most, clearly falls into the category of a pro-Obama work. While it certainly included many of the warts of the President's early life, the ones that found their way into the story were usually carefully chosen anecdotes designed to shape the narrative he has sold to the public.

The Bridge is the first book that moves beyond this and can be called a "history." It relies heavily on Dreams, but doesn't take what was written as gospel. Scores of interviews with former classmates or colleagues are included, corroborating or refuting the tales that were told in this memoir. When the Robert Caros and Edmund Morrises of the next century write the "defining" Obama biographies, these primary sources will be heavily cited.

This work does a fantastic job of pointing out Obama's key role in American civil rights history while still maintaining a reasonable air of detachment as to the man and his policies. No matter what your politics are, you should be able to get something from this. Several conservatives have written one sentence reviews attacking the book simply because it is about an individual they despise; they should be aware that this is the most balanced book that has yet to be written about this age in American history. If you want to read only books written on people you lionize, there are plenty of stories about George Washington and his cherry tree; if you want to read a balanced, well-researched work on a major historical figure, I'd highly recommend The Bridge.
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Top reviews from other countries

noreen shorser
5.0 out of 5 stars Obama
Reviewed in Canada on March 31, 2018
informative and optimistic
Urvashi Kumari
4.0 out of 5 stars Delightful
Reviewed in India on September 5, 2018
Sth one never expects from a biography, a page turner.
Diacha
5.0 out of 5 stars OBAMA'S ARC
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2010
David Remnick's "The Bridge" is an excellent "ascent narrative" of the most powerful and perhaps most enigmatic man in the world.

Remnick recounts President Obama's life and career in three stages. The first covers his highly unconventional upbringing in Indonesia and Hawaii and his extraordinary re-casting of himself in late adolescence as an African American (at school "I never thought of Barry as black" remarked a Punahou classmate), as well as the emergence of the professorial and - in the words of Jonathan Alter, author of the virtually companion book "The Promise" - Zen-like persona that is the 44th President's signature. The second describes his relatively brief political apprenticeship as first a community organizer and then a state politician in Chicago, followed by a two-year stint in the US Senate before his entry into the White House race in 2006. The third addresses the campaign itself, though with a deliberately narrow focus on the role played in it by "race."

Luck and good fortune played their parts in Obama's rise: luck, for example, in the scandal fuelled implosions of the campaigns of both his Democratic primary and Republican election opponents in the Senate race; good fortune as in his adoption by movers and shakers such as Newt Minnow, Jerry Kellman or Valerie Jarrett which helped the future president navigate his way through the Chicago power structure where he was educated in reality without being overly corrupted or tainted by its quintessential "old Politics," or as in his propulsion to national fame through being selected to address the 2004 Democratic Convention.

But, as Remnick makes clear, will, skill and sheer effort on the part of the candidate were equally instrumental. Obama - described as one friend as "endearingly ambitious" - worked hard on his political career -"very focused and disciplined, monkish," observed Kellman - pumping the donors, working the grass-roots, travelling the circuits day after day even when it looked likely to be unrewarded, pushing his undoubted commitment to his family towards but just short of its finely judged elastic limit. He also made numerous bold and ultimately canny judgments which ran contrary to his advisors' counsel - as in the decision to run against Carole Mosely Braun for the Senate seat or to deliver his masterly speech on race in the aftermath of the Rev'd Jeremiah Wright crisis (Remnick, incidentally, helps put Obama's complex relationship with Wright - the author of a sermon on the "Audacity To Hope" - into context).

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously described the young FDR as possessing "a second class mind but a first class temperament." Obama, we see is top rank in both departments. Beyond this, though, Remnick conveys a sense of destiny, of Obama, as unusual and as improbable as his rise might have been, picking his way coolly, assuredly and unfalteringly through the obstacle course of chance and choices towards inevitable success. Here the most natural comparison is to Abraham Lincoln.

Remnick chooses to anchor Obama's story in the history of American race relations. The bridge of the title refers not only to a physical symbol - the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, one of the most iconic stations of the civil rights movement (Pettus himself was a Confederate general) - but also to the candidate's metaphorical role as a link between the black and white races and between the old, bitterly divided United States and a new, post-racial society. This is fair enough; it is after all consistent with the narrative constructed by Obama himself, but Remnick brings home to us the depth of the divisions, the gratuitous offence given by the one side and the possibly disportionate offence taken by the other. Ironically, the racism most encountered by Obama in his rise emanated from his own chosen side: many blacks did not consider him to be "black enough" and showered him with contempt, which he only overcame in victory. With Obama's election, mused McCain aide Mark Salter, only slightly ironically, "America's original sin was finally expunged."

Remnick's day job (one wonders how he found time to balance both tasks) is Editor-in-Chief of "The New Yorker," and this book strikes one as being a well-ordered chain of "New Yorker" essays - long, well-researched, deep into their milieu, atmospheric more than analytic - on topics such as the Kenya of Obama's father, the prestigious Punahou prep school in Honolulu, Chicago's South-side politics, the Civil Rights movement and so on. Remnick's worldview is unsurprisingly also that of the magazine, predisposed to favor Obama and his agenda, and the book is written in the mildly condescending voice of the East Coast liberal establishment. So, bottom line: if you like the "New Yorker" you will love "The Bridge." On these terms, it is a tour de force.
9 people found this helpful
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C. Ball
5.0 out of 5 stars A biography worthy of an extraordinary man...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2011
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 guarantees that his presidency will prove a success. But no-one less than extraordinary could have the rise Obama had, to go from an Illinois state senator to President of the United States in four years.

'The bridge' in the title refers not just to the attack on peaceful civil rights demonstrators by armed officers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, but also the way Obama perceives himself and his role in politics.

With a white mother and African father, Obama deliberately carved out a role for himself as an African-American - he wasn't born with that perception of himself and he grew up largely removed from the race context in America. And it's interesting how many people who knew Obama as a child and teenager said the same variation of 'I never thought of Barack as black'. Obama chose to position himself as an African-America, but one with a unique insight and understanding of whites as well. He saw himself as a man of two cultures, a man capable of living in and understanding both, a man who could act as a living bridge. And that perception influenced his entire political career - he consistently strove to act as a mediator between parties, a conciliator, someone who could reconcile opposing viewpoints. How successful he proves at doing that in the vicious partisan world of Washington politics is something for another book.
lokue
4.0 out of 5 stars A little slow to start
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2013
Quite a long book and though interesting read it isn't stimulating me to read regularly. It is too long when reading electronically and the percentage counter barely moves after a significant read.