Renegade: The Making of a President

Learn how history was made! (2010-02-22) : 5/5
Very insightful view of history in the making. Really gives you a behind the scenes look at Obama's Campaign. Enjoyed reading it very much.
Good account of a great campaign. (2010-01-19) : 4/5
I felt Wolffe's account of what's gone down as one of the best campaigns in history was a very good read. He gives first hand detail of information that I never new from just watching the news on TV. I did think the book jumped around a bit, which is mentioned under prior reviews. But overall, I really enjoyed the book.
A mixed package (2010-01-19) : 4/5
This book is interesting. It has something in it for everyone, no matter what your opinion is of the President. However the book isn't quite what you expect. The good thing of the book isn't what you expect and vice versa.

Most people when they pick up the book think they are getting a first hand account of the campaign. There is some of that in the book with some shortfalls. This book isn't a good book for a comprehensive history. The book is very choppy. There is no story telling along a time line. Also, you can say the author is very biased. That fits though, the book is about the candidate, and not the whole campaign. Some events in the campaign is totally missed and other significant events are glossed over with minimal detail.

The good aspect of the book is how it describes what it does describe. The intimate description of the events makes it come alive; like you are there watching it unfold. You also learn about some things that did not make the press like secret meetings and the view they had. The book also shows how campaigns function nowadays. You see how campaigns work through an intricate web of relationships. That comes out in very clearly in the book.

The overall big thing in this book is you get to see the candidate like no where else, including his autobiography. Through his little stories you see who the President is. I wish this book would have come out before the election. I think the results would be different. You don't see anything bad about him. I think the book casts him in his true light, liberal man full of passionate beliefs. The people around him are the same way. You see his strengths and his shortfalls through how he reacted through the day to day events. I think the book also sort of captures how he thinks. That is valuable to understand events now.

The book does read like a ball game account. No matter your position you will see the excitement that is politics. I think most will like the book for that reason alone.


Renegade: the Prescience of a Reporter (2010-01-03) : 5/5
When Barack Obama suggested to Richard Wolffe that he write a book about the Obama campaign and the 2008 election, Wolffe dismissed the idea, noting "There's too much coverage....People are consuming everything about the election." (p. 330) That's true and indeed, there is not much new to be discovered in this book about the events that led up to President Obama's election. But musicians often say that the music occurs between the notes, and so too, the "real story" of the Obama campaign happened between or around the events, during those moments when important choices are made, when tears are shed, or during philosophical conversations on a bus in the middle of the night.

Wolffe attempts (successfully, I think) to illuminate those moments between the events, when Barack Obama's character is revealed through his decision-making and through his interactions with the people around him. It's a tough job. Wolffe walks the thin line between being too analytic and impersonal and collapsing into soap opera. His simple and straightforward writing style helps to keep him on the straight and narrow in this regard, never slipping into a gossipy tone, even with the personal material, and never sounding bombastic in his analysis.

Wolffe's story about traveling with Barack Obama during his campaign for the presidency betrays a surprising humility on the part of the author. Given the unprecedented access he had to the candidate during the entire campaign, I imagine the temptation would be great to write a Barack and Me kind of memoir. But he succeeds in making himself almost completely invisible until the Afterword, when he talks about the similarities between his and Obama's upbringing. (It's a very touching and appropriate ending to the story.) Instead, he focuses on Obama's character and personality--how he came to be the person he is today. I came away from the book with a clearer understanding of the philosophical ground upon which Barack Obama stands.

I originally wrote this review about a year ago, not bothering to submit it to the website. When I went back at the beginning of 2010 and reread it, I was struck by my original closing line: "He [Obama] will disappoint both conservatives and progressives, because, as Wolffe makes clear, he is not about pleasing one side or the other, but about finding common ground between them." The temptation is to applaud my own prescience but really, the credit belongs to Wolffe for writing a book which so accurately predicts the particular challenges of the Obama presidency. That makes it a very important, and useful, book.



"He told me..." (2009-12-19) : 2/5
Decent enough retelling of the 2008 Obama campaign, but jars the reader constantly by author inserting himself into the narrative, with dozens of "...he told me..." references. More confident authors use footnotes or other source notes. Second, author continuously makes a point or states a fact, only to follow with a tortured concluding sentence the purpose of which is solely to make use of the word "renegade." It is clumsy, obvious, and distracting.