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 usinside the marriage of the most dynamic couple in politics today. Sheshows how well they complement each other: Michelle, the highlyorganized, sometimes intimidating, list-making pragmatist; Barack, theintrospective political charmer who won't pick up his socks but shootsfor the stars. Their relationship, like those of many couples with twocareers and two children, has been so strained at times that he has hadto persuade her to support his climb up the political ladder. And youcan't blame her for occasionally regretting it: In this campaign, it isMichelle who has absorbed much of the skepticism from voters aboutObama. One conservative magazine put her on the cover under theheadline "Mrs. Grievance."
Michelle's story carries with it all theextraordinary achievements and lingering pain of America in thepost-civil rights era. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, thedaughter of a city worker and a stay-at-home mom in a neighborhoodrocked by white flight. She was admitted to Princeton amid an angrydebate about affirmative action and went on to Harvard Law School,where she was more comfortable doing pro-bono work for the poor thangunning for awards with the rest of her peers. She became a corporatelawyer, then left to train community leaders. She is modern in hertastes but likes to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Brady Bunch.
Inthis carefully reported biography, drawing upon interviews withmorethan one hundred people, including one with Michelle herself, Mundycaptures the complexity of this remarkable woman and the remarkablelife she has lived.
Liza Mundy's sane and realistic biography of Michelle Obama implicitlyacknowledges the new, more serious status of a presidential spouse.Although the book includes stories about who picks up his dirty socks(he does) and who has the paramount role in raising their daughters(she does), the book also takes seriously Michelle Obama's politicalopinions and the attempts (by her and her husband's campaign) to tweakher personality for public consumption.
