Returning with her second book in office, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “This Fight Is Our Fight” is a razor-sharp critique of the policy choices – wrought by corporate influence and dark money -- that have imperiled the economic security of America’s middle class. One of the book’s great strengths is that Warren doesn’t focus only on one or two issues, but rather tackles numerous poor policy choices that have led to this moment: a failure to enforce antitrust laws; deregulating the financial industry; crushing unions and workers; allowing public and private student loan lenders to fleece students; and curtailing medical and scientific research.
Warren’s concentration on the economic fragility of America’s middle class ran through her 2014 book, “A Fighting Chance,” and was a constant theme in her scores of books and articles written during her decades as a bankruptcy expert and law professor. What sets “The Fight Is Our Fight” apart is the tone, which is blunter and more impassioned than her 2014 memoir, “A Fighting Chance”). Warren names names in this book, and she isn’t reluctant to shine a light on, among others, the government officials who serve as handmaidens for industry rather than as regulators looking out for everyday Americans. In one outrageous example, Warren’s frustration leaps off the page when she describes a meeting that she had with the Office of Comptroller of Currency during the Bush Administration in which she pressed that agency to clamp down on deceptive credit card practices. After Warren had made her pitch with data and policy prescriptions, the Acting Comptroller (Julie Williams) told Warren while walking her out that “it was too bad” that the agency could never undertake such reforms because “the banks wouldn’t like it.”
Despite the harder-edged tone of “This Fight Is Our Fight,” Warren’s book is compulsively readable. Her prose is straightforward and engaging, but her greatest strength is an ability to illustrate recondite policy arguments through her own biography and through the lives of real people who are struggling to keep their place in the middle class: the Wal-Mart worker who had to quit community college at night because her employer refused to give her a set work schedule; the homeowner who lost his house due to the misleading terms in a refinancing; the student who started, but never finished, art school and now struggles under the burden of crushing student loans; and the couple who have steadily lost pace despite decades of working, saving, and playing by the rules. Warren’s portraits of these people are carefully drawn and detailed, which not only makes them come to life, but provides great force for the policy arguments behind them.
Warren’s “This Fight Is Our Fight” is more than just an excellent political book; it’s a statement of first principles from a political leader of surpassing wisdom, dedication, and compassion. At a time of great upheaval and anxiety in our nation, Warren provides something even more valuable than individual answers to individual problems; she provides concrete reassurance that America can build a better tomorrow if we once again prioritize the needs of millions of working Americans over the narrow interests of a privileged elite. Such reassurance is in short supply right now, which makes Warren’s book an ideal manual for these times.
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Print/ink defect
So I'm only partially through the book and enjoying it, but the book itself has an odd print/ink defect..
Top reviews from other countries
David archibald
She never forgets who she is, where she came from and what is fundamentally important.
Reviewed in Canada on May 24, 2017Gracie James
She tells it as it really is!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 26, 2018
