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Audiobook (abridged)6 hours
Renegade: The Making of a President
Written by Richard Wolffe
Narrated by Richard Wolffe
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Before the White House and Air Force One, before the TV ads and the enormous rallies, there was the real Barack Obama: a man wrestling with the momentous decision to run for the presidency, feeling torn about leaving behind a young family, and figuring out how to win the biggest prize in politics.
This book is the previously untold and epic story of how a political newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into the world's most powerful leader. But it is also a uniquely intimate portrait of the person behind the iconic posters and the Secret Service code name Renegade.
Drawing on a dozen unplugged interviews with the candidate and president, as well as twenty-one months covering his campaign as it traveled from coast to coast, Richard Wolffe answers the simple yet enduring question about Barack Obama: Who is he?
Based on Wolffe's unprecedented access to Obama, Renegade reveals the making of a president, both on the campaign trail and before he ran for high office. It explains how the politician who emerged in an extraordinary election learned the personal and political skills to succeed during his youth and early career. With cool self-discipline, calculated risk taking, and simple storytelling, Obama developed the strategies he would need to survive the onslaught of the Clintons and John McCain, and build a multimillion-dollar machine to win a historic contest.
In Renegade, Richard Wolffe shares with us his front-row seat at Obama's announcement to run for president on a frigid day in Springfield, and his victory speech on a warm night in Chicago. We fly on the candidate's plane and ride in his bus on an odyssey across a country in crisis; stand next to him at a bar on the night he secures the nomination; and are backstage as he delivers his convention speech to a stadium crowd and a transfixed national audience. From a teacher's office in Iowa to the Oval Office in Washington, we see and hear Barack Obama with an immediacy and honesty never witnessed before.
Renegade provides not only an account of Obama's triumphs, but also examines his many personal and political trials. We see Obama wrestling with race and politics, as well as his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We see him struggling with life as a presidential candidate, a campaign that falters for most of its first year, and his reaction to a surprise defeat in the New Hampshire primary. And we see him relying on his personal experience, as well as meticulous polling, to pass the presidential test in foreign and economic affairs.
Renegade is an essential guide to understanding President Barack Obama and his trusted inner circle of aides and friends. It is also a riveting and enlightening first draft of history and political psychology.
From the Hardcover edition.
This book is the previously untold and epic story of how a political newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into the world's most powerful leader. But it is also a uniquely intimate portrait of the person behind the iconic posters and the Secret Service code name Renegade.
Drawing on a dozen unplugged interviews with the candidate and president, as well as twenty-one months covering his campaign as it traveled from coast to coast, Richard Wolffe answers the simple yet enduring question about Barack Obama: Who is he?
Based on Wolffe's unprecedented access to Obama, Renegade reveals the making of a president, both on the campaign trail and before he ran for high office. It explains how the politician who emerged in an extraordinary election learned the personal and political skills to succeed during his youth and early career. With cool self-discipline, calculated risk taking, and simple storytelling, Obama developed the strategies he would need to survive the onslaught of the Clintons and John McCain, and build a multimillion-dollar machine to win a historic contest.
In Renegade, Richard Wolffe shares with us his front-row seat at Obama's announcement to run for president on a frigid day in Springfield, and his victory speech on a warm night in Chicago. We fly on the candidate's plane and ride in his bus on an odyssey across a country in crisis; stand next to him at a bar on the night he secures the nomination; and are backstage as he delivers his convention speech to a stadium crowd and a transfixed national audience. From a teacher's office in Iowa to the Oval Office in Washington, we see and hear Barack Obama with an immediacy and honesty never witnessed before.
Renegade provides not only an account of Obama's triumphs, but also examines his many personal and political trials. We see Obama wrestling with race and politics, as well as his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. We see him struggling with life as a presidential candidate, a campaign that falters for most of its first year, and his reaction to a surprise defeat in the New Hampshire primary. And we see him relying on his personal experience, as well as meticulous polling, to pass the presidential test in foreign and economic affairs.
Renegade is an essential guide to understanding President Barack Obama and his trusted inner circle of aides and friends. It is also a riveting and enlightening first draft of history and political psychology.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Reviews for Renegade
Rating: 3.7019200000000003 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
52 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well written and interesting book. I enjoyed learning about Barack Obama. The story is largely about his presidential campaign but also provides some information from other times in his life. I recommend the book and now am interested in reading some of Barak's books.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading Richard Wolffe's Renegade in the context of the last four years, instead of less than a year after Barack Obama's 2008 victory, helps one realize how pragmatic the then junior of Illinois really was in his political thinking even as he challenged the establishment. Throughout the book, Wolffe threads the narrative of the nearly two-year campaign with Obama's biography and life experiences to help give an informed view of Barack Obama and how he used those experiences to shape his campaign and political policies he used. But this book wasn't a glorification nor idealization of Obama himself nor was to a glowing account about how perfect his entire campaign was, as Wolffe shows Obama angry and frustrated like anyone who was campaigning for President of the United States and highlighted the small and large mistakes members of the campaign made.There were a few problems I had with the book, though both were how Wolffe decided to structure the material he presented and both played into one another. The transitions between Obama's personal experiences that helped shape him with the campaign issue that brought about said experience were not always ideal, which occasional resulted in some rough reading. Combined with this was that Wolffe would jump back and forth along the two-year timeline in which the campaign took place, though it was partly understandable as Wolffe wanted to give the whole narrative of the issue he was covering but then returning to earlier in the timeline with the next issue was a little jarring.Given both the positives and negatives this is a book I would recommend for anyone who seriously wants to understand how Barack Obama came to his policy views and how he changed from the junior senator from Illinois to major party nominee to President of the United States.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Richard Wolffe is a journalist for MSNBC and shares his interviews and experiences as he covered the Barack Obama's political campaign for President. The book is aa little confusing because it does not follow in chronological order.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Based on exclusive interviews with Barack Obama, his friends, his family and his advisors, Renegade: The Making of a President is an intimate look inside Barack Obama's life, including his childhood and family, his college years, and his years as a community organizer in Chicago.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The author traveled with Obama all through the campaign, from his annoucement in February 2007 till his election. But the book tells nothing about the inside of the McCain campaign--unlike Teddy White's books, which somehow managed to tell about both camps.. Wolffe says good thing about Obama and I agreed and appreciated that, but I found the book rather dry and not as exciting as books about politics often are. So I was disappointed in the book--maybe because so much is still so fresh in my mind about that long campaign which turned out so gloriously.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I love watching Richard Wolffe on MSNBC; his commentary is usually very insightful. That's why I was particularly disappointed by Renegade. Mr. Wolffe's writing was felt unnatural, with sentence fragments and repetition of the word "renegade" that was forced at best. The election was presented disjointedly, without chronological or any other logical order of events. Perhaps Mr. Wolffe hasn't figure out how to escape his journalist roots; I felt as though I'd read a greatest hits of newspaper coverage.