Michelle: A Biography

by Liza Mundy (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $4.35

  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 us inside the marriage of the most dynamic couple in politics today. She shows how well they complement each other: Michelle, the highly organized, sometimes intimidating, list-making pragmatist; Barack, the introspective political charmer who won't pick up his socks but shoots for the stars. Their relationship, like those of many couples with two careers and two children, has been so strained at times that he has had to persuade her to support his climb up the political ladder. And you can't blame her for occasionally regretting it: In this campaign, it is Michelle who has absorbed much of the skepticism from voters about Obama. One conservative magazine put her on the cover under the headline Mrs. Grievance.

  Michelle's story carries with it all the extraordinary achievements and lingering pain of America in the post-civil rights era. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, the daughter of a city worker and a stay-at-home mom in a neighborhood rocked by white flight. She was admitted to Princeton amid an angry debate about affirmative action and went on to Harvard Law School, where she was more comfortable doing pro-bono work for the poor than gunning for awards with the rest of her peers. She became a corporate lawyer, then left to train community leaders. She is modern in her tastes but likes to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Brady Bunch.

  In this carefully reported biography, drawing upon interviews with more than one hundred people, including one with Michelle herself, Mundy captures the complexity of this remarkable woman and the remarkable life she has lived.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.26

  It will be a deeply reported book tracing Michelle's life from her beginnings to now. She was every parent's dream, skipping second grade because of her smarts, going on to Princeton and then Harvard Law School. The book will describe the South side of Chicago where the Robinson family grew up, Michelle's parents (her father had MS and worked for the city of Chicago, her mother stayed home), the hard-working culture of the Robinson family, Michelle's experience on the racially-tense campus of Princeton in the early 80s, her success at Harvard, how she experienced the death of her father and best friend, how she met Obama, the kind of partnership they have created, the kind of career as a lawyer and health care executive she pursued in Chicago, her views about political life and her aptitude for it, and her profile as a mother. The book will be based on the public record, on interviews she has given in the past, and on fresh interviews with her and members of her circle.