• Complain

Christopher Andersen - Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage

Here you can read online Christopher Andersen - Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2009, publisher: William Morrow, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Christopher Andersen Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage
  • Book:
    Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    William Morrow
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2009
  • Rating:
    3 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 60
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

She is my rockthe one person who keeps it real. Barack I dont want anybody to think that its easy. . . . We have a strong marriage, but its not perfect. Michelle They exploded onto the world scene and within a matter of a few short years captured the ultimate political prize. In so doing, they became a First Couple like no other: Hethe biracial son of a free-spirited Kansas-born woman and a mercurial Kenyan father who abandoned him at an early agewas raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, educated at Columbia and Harvard, and launched his political career in Americas heartland. She, by contrast, was the product of a solidly middle-American family with roots planted firmly in Chicagos working-class South Sidepaving the way for her to achieve her dreams of an Ivy League education and a position at one of the nations top law firms. By the time they claimed the White House in one of the most hotly contested presidential races in modern history, Barack and Michelle Obama were seen by millions around the world as the new Jack and Jackie Kennedybrilliant, attractive, elegant, youthful, exciting. Accompanied by their two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, the Obamas would arrive at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the promise of a new Camelot all but assured. Given the obvious historic significance of what they have accomplished together, the marriage of Barack and Michelle stands as one of the great personal and political partnerships in American history. Yet, incredibly, the true nature of that relationship has remained a mystery. Until now. In the style of his No. 1 New York Times bestsellers The Day Diana Died and The Day John Died, as well as his bestselling books about the Kennedys, the Clintons, and the Bushes, author Christopher Andersen draws on important sourcessome speaking here for the first timeto paint the first complete, compelling portrait of Americas first black First Family. Among the many intriguing insights and stunning revelations: New behind-the-scenes details of the Obamas courtship and marriageand the lovers who went before. The early tragedies that shaped both Baracks and Michelles personalities, and how those events haunt them to this day. Also, new information about Baracks rootless childhood, at times tortured adolescence, and the true extent of his early drug use. How Baracks ambition put a strain on their relationship from the very beginning, how close the Obamas really came to breaking up, and how Michelle made the difficult decision that saved their marriage. The little-known near-tragedy that brought Barack and Michelle closer than they had ever been. How Michelle may have saved her husbands presidential campaign, and her surprising behind-the-scenes role as the presidents chief advisor. The pressures and delights of raising two young girls in the relentless glare of the media, and how, like Jack and Jackie Kennedy before them, Barack and Michelle strive to make the lives of Americas two most famous children as normal as possible. Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage is an intimate and ultimately riveting look at their unique partnership, and the humor, faith, fortitude, and grace that defines it. It is, above all, an extraordinary American love story.

Christopher Andersen: author's other books


Who wrote Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Barack and Michelle

Portrait of an American Marriage

Christopher Andersen

For my First Lady Valerie Contents There was something different about the - photo 1

For my First Lady, Valerie

Contents

There was something different about the screams this time. They...

On the surface, they seemed about as well suited to...

She's what?" Alice Brown asked, the tone of her voice...

He must have driven past Michelle's house a thousand times...

As a senior partner at Sidley Austin, Newton Minow used...

Now we have two things to celebrate on the Fourth...

He had been too busy honing his speech to concentrate...

Oh, come on," Michelle said when she heard the news.

She is my rock--the one person who keeps it real.

--Barack

Barack and I complete each other--as partners, as friends, and as lovers.

--Michelle

T hey exploded onto the national scene in 2004 and within four short years captured the ultimate political prize. In so doing, they became a First Couple like no other: He, the biracial son of a free-spirited midwesterner and her brilliant but troubled Kenyan husband, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia and elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. She, raised on Chicago's hardscrabble South Side by working-class African American parents who sacrificed so she could achieve her own dreams of an Ivy League education and a job at one of America's top law firms.

By the time they claimed the White House in one of the most hotly contested presidential races in modern history, Barack and Michelle Obama were seen by millions around the world as the new Jack and Jackie Kennedy--brilliant, attractive, elegant, youthful, exciting. Accompanied by their two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, the Obamas would arrive at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the promise of a new Camelot all but assured.

Given the obvious historic significance of what they accomplished together, the marriage of Barack and Michelle stood as one of the great personal and political partnerships of all time. Seemingly overnight, they somehow managed to obliterate barriers that had stood for centuries--and to accomplish this phenomenal feat with humor, grace, and dignity. By the time he was sworn in using Abraham Lincoln's Bible, Barack and Michelle Obama were indisputably the First Couple not only of America but of the world.

Whatever inexplicable forces drew these two remarkable people together also propelled them to the summit of power and prestige. And these same forces enabled them to overcome the strains that, for a time, threatened their marriage.

Like so many of the Presidents and First Ladies who went before them, as individuals each was a mind-spinning tangle of contradictions. He was the supremely confident overachiever whose fatherless childhood left him deeply scarred emotionally, the product of an exotic multicultural upbringing who yearned for roots and a sense of his own racial identity, the prep school alumnus agitating in the 'hood, the would-be reformer who owed his meteoric political rise in part to a famously corrupt political machine. She was the dutiful daughter who was grateful for the sacrifices her parents made to get her into Princeton but hated every minute there, the young corporate lawyer indulging her taste for the finer things but searching for meaning in her life and her work, the wife and mother who despised politicians but outperformed even the most seasoned of them as she helped her husband win the presidency.

Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a President faced an economic crisis like the one waiting for Barack Obama when he entered office. And like Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle Obama would be called upon to be her husband's strongest ally as he met this challenge head-on. Now, as Barack and Michelle take their first bold steps into history, it is important to understand what it was that shaped them as individuals, and the crucibles--both public and private--that would come to define their marriage. For theirs is a stirring, against-all-odds saga of hope and commitment, and--above all else--an inspiring, intriguing, uniquely American love story.

My wife was mad at me and we had this baby.... It wasn't a high point in my life.

--Barack

Oh, no. I did not sign on for this.

--Michelle

There were a lot of stresses and strains...

--Barack

September 2001

T here was something different about the screams this time. They were more piercing, more frantic and insistent than the sounds that usually rousted Sasha's parents from slumber in the middle of the night. As usual, it was Michelle who climbed out of bed first and made her way to Sasha's room while Daddy stayed in bed, hoping that his three-month-old daughter would quickly be lulled back to sleep.

It quickly became clear that the baby would not be consoled. Barack finally threw back the covers and, still half asleep, plodded down the hall to investigate. "Jeez, Michelle," he asked as he walked into the baby's room, "can't you get her to stop?" Michelle, who stood by the crib gently cradling Sasha, whirled around and shot her husband a withering glance.

It was a look he had grown accustomed to since the birth of their first daughter, Malia, in 1998, and never more so than in the few months since Sasha's arrival. Michelle was a graduate of both Princeton and Harvard Law School. She had worked for one of the top law firms in the nation, and then for the office of Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago before signing on with a nonprofit organization called Public Allies. She was beautiful and brilliant and yet, like so many other young working mothers, she was the one who was expected to bear most of the parenting burden.

In truth, Michelle's anger had reached the boiling point a year earlier, after Barack overrode her strong objections and ran in the Democratic primary against popular four-term incumbent Congressman Bobby Rush. Obama had been elected in 1996 to represent Chicago's gentrified, racially integrated Hyde Park neighborhood in the Illinois State Senate--a feat he accomplished by using legal challenges to keep his rivals off the ballot and then running unopposed. After three years, he was impatient to move on and felt confident he could unseat Rush.

A Chicago native, Michelle knew then what lay in store for her husband. She warned him that he was not ready to challenge Rush, a founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party who had earned respectability as an alderman and ward committeeman before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Barack, a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, had a white mother, an Ivy League education, and no roots in Chicago's black community. In other words, Michelle only half-jokingly pointed out to her husband, he had "zero street cred." Barack's colleague in the State Senate Donne Trotter was even more blunt. Obama, he said, was "a white man in blackface. There are those in our community who simply do not see him as one of us."

The grueling campaign had meant long absences from the family, but Barack did what he could to placate Michelle. In the middle of the congressional primary campaign, Barack kept his promise to take Michelle and then eighteen-month-old Malia to spend the holidays with his grandparents in Hawaii. When Illinois Governor George Ryan begged him to return for a key vote to make illegal gun possession a felony, Barack reluctantly broached the subject with Michelle. Malia had come down with a cold, and Michelle worried about subjecting the ailing toddler to a long flight. "We're not going anywhere," she told him. "But," she added icily, "you just do what you have to do."

Barack got the message. Unwilling to further anger his wife, he refused to return to Illinois for the crucial gun control vote. Rush, whose twenty-nine-year-old son had been shot to death on the South Side not long before, hammered away at his opponent's unwillingness to interrupt his vacation to cast a vote that would save young black lives.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage»

Look at similar books to Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage»

Discussion, reviews of the book Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.