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Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now
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About This Book
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2020 A concise, brilliant, and trenchant examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s successful lifelong quest for the presidency by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and disappointments that he has suffered. Yet even as Biden's life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors, and reversals of fortune. As he says, "Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable." His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship—an essential quality as he leads America toward recovery and renewal. Blending up-close journalism and broader context, Evan Osnos, who won the National Book Award in 2014, draws on nearly a decade of reporting for The New Yorker to capture the characters and meaning of 2020's extraordinary presidential election. It is based on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members. This portrayal illuminates Biden's long and eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama's vice president, his sojourn in the political wilderness after being passed over for Hillary Clinton in 2016, his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, and his choice of Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate. Osnos ponders the difficulties Biden faces as his presidency begins and weighs how a changing country, a deep well of experiences, and a rigorous approach to the issues, have altered his positions. In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy—a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.
Reviews
"They believe too much is at stake."
"This book suggests Biden has the capacity for self-reinvention."
"Mostly drawn from the author's New Yorker pieces, the text retains the feel of the originals, which occasionally detracts from the cohesion of the narrative."
"Although Osnos has his doubts about Biden's dazzling regular teeth and his replanted hairline, the cosmetic rejuvenation of this good, comfortingly ordinary man is just one more proof of America's enviable capacity for making a fresh start."
"Joe Biden ably takes the measure of the man and the politician, presenting a picture of the Democratic nominee that is in a few ways unexpected ..."
"The book does not go into much depth about Biden's early life but includes insight into how tragedies—his first wife's and infant daughter's 1972 death in a car accident and his son Beau's 2015 death from brain cancer—instilled within Biden a sense of empathy that enables him to relate to those suffering adversities."
"There isn't, traditionally, much of an ideological basis to such political portraiture."
"Journalist Osnos (Age of Ambition) draws on vivid reportage from his New Yorker profiles of Biden to paint him as an unprepossessing but effective politician who is good at connecting with voters and wrangling with congressional leaders and foreign potentates ..."
"As Osnos moves to Biden's most recent political chapter, his analysis of how a Biden presidency might work is fascinating ..."
"Lacking the molecular depth of a full-fledged biography, Osnos' finely honed depiction nevertheless devotes sufficient attention to the essential aspects of Biden's personal and political philosophies to offer a solid foundation."
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