The Skimmer

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

By David Remnick

Knopf; 656 pages

The title of Remnick's opus refers to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the bloody origin point of a tide that swept the first black President into office 44 years later. But it is also an apt name for the story of Barack Obama's arc from youthful ambivalence to adult ambition, his struggle to reconcile his biracial roots and his attempt to build a political identity based on consensus rather than insistence. Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, has written an expansive work, as much an account of the forces that forged Obama's identity and intellect as it is a presidential biography. Though the level of detail can overwhelm at points, Remnick's fluid prose keeps the narrative on track. The book is well reported--featuring a host of anecdotes from intimates who ducked the media in 2008--and manages to set the President in historical context without losing sight of his humanity. 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.

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