Obama Biographer in Town Tonight

By Betsy Mikel in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 13, 2010 5:40PM

If you keep tabs on The New Yorker editors, the Tribune's Printers Row, or books written about President Barack Obama, then chances are you already know there's a big event tonight. Tribune literary editor Elizabeth Taylor will be joining David Remnick to discuss his new book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. Obama's story has been told time and time again since he entered the presidential race more than three years ago, but Remnick is the first author who attempts to provide an in-depth portrait through extensive on-record interviews with those involved in Obama's past and present. Remnick spoke to Obama's friends, teachers, mentors, associates, family and the president himself to explore Obama's path from student, to community organizer, to politician, to president. And naturally, both race and the city of Chicago play a big role in all of it. Here's an excerpt from the book's product description:

Deftly setting Obama’s political career against the galvanizing intersection of race and politics in Chicago’s history, Remnick shows us how that city’s complex racial legacy would make Obama’s forays into politics a source of controversy and bare-knuckle tactics: his clashes with older black politicians in the Illinois State Senate, his disastrous decision to challenge the former Black Panther Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000, the sex scandals that would decimate his more experienced opponents in the 2004 Senate race, and the story—from both sides—of his confrontation with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

To further justify the reliability of the research behind The Bridge, Remnick is a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998, which has since won twenty-four National Magazine Awards. We haven't had a chance to get our hands on The Bridge yet, but we trust that it will be an interesting and provoking read for both Obama supporters and adversaries.

If you can't make it to tonight's event, check out Kevin Boyle's review for the Trib or listen to yesterday's Eight Forty-Eight interview with David Remnick, which concentrates on the Chicago portion of the book.

Conversation with David Remnick, author of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, Cindy Pritzker Auditorium in the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St., 6:00 pm, free