The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama

David Remnick

Pan Macmillan, May 7, 2010 - Biography & Autobiography - 672 pages

The rise of Barack Obama is one of the great stories of this century: a defining moment for America, and one with truly global resonance. This is the book of his phenomenal journey to election.

Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself, David Remnick has put together a nuanced, unexpected and masterly portrait of the man who was determined to become the first African-American President.

Most importantly, The Bridge argues that Obama imagined and fashioned an identity for himself against the epic drama of race in America. In a way that Obama's own memoirs cannot, it examines both the personal and political elements of the story, and gives shape not only to a decisive period of history, but also to the way it crucially influenced, animated and motivated a gifted and complex man.

About the author

David Remnick was a reporter for the Washington Post for ten years, including four in Moscow. He joined The New Yorker as a writer in 1992 and has been the magazine’s editor since 1998. His book King of the World, a biography of Muhammad Ali, was selected by Time as the top non-fiction book of 1998. Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama
• Author: David Remnick
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 2010
• ISBN: 0330531603, 9780330531603
• Length: 672 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Cultural & Regional; Biography & Autobiography / Historical; Biography & Autobiography / Political; Biography & Autobiography / Presidents & Heads of State; History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); History / Social History; History / United States / 21st Century; Political Science / Political Process / Campaigns & Elections