Book Bag: Human Bridges Falling Up: Multiracial Americans Tread Path to Inclusion

book_the_promise.jpgReviews by Sharon L. Shervington

The Promise;
President Obama, Year One
Written by Jonathan Alter

The idea of an in-depth analysis of President Obama’s first year in office seems like a good one. But the book itself never seems to fully gain its bearings. Perhaps that is because there is too much to be covered.

Not only does Mr. Alter attempt to give us an overview of the president’s first year in office, but also he says that he wants to paint an intimate, inside portrait of what the president is really like. Taken together that is a tall order.

Glimpses of Inauguration Day are charming, including a moment at the
very end of that night when Obama is unsure of where the family quarters
are at the White House. And that is emblematic of what is best about
the book, a sense of how the relationships between the president, his
aides, his Cabinet, and his opponents are structured. And since it is
that which is behind all that happens in the government, it matters very
much. The book also looks with care at the financial meltdown, the bank
bailout, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and of course health care. 

Simon & Schuster; 458 pages; $28

 


book_from_capetown.jpgBlair Underwood presents: From Capetown with
Love, a Tennyson Hardwick novel
By Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes

This is the third, and perhaps
the smoothest installment of a series that features noirish hero
Tennyson Hardwick, an actor, part-time bodyguard, and former
“pay-for-player.” It starts in Capetown, where Hardwick gets an
assignment to protect a major movie star’s township visit to adopt a
young child. And it is there that he first sees an unusual kind of
martial arts, involving deadly knife work. When the scene switches back
to Hollywood and the adorable adopted daughter of the actress, Sophia
Maitland, is kidnapped at her high-profile second birthday party, that
turns out to be a major clue.

Sprinkled with exceptionally well-written scenes of our hero’s amorous
adventures (this is a husband-and-wife writing team), the reappearance
of characters such as Hardwick’s ex-cop father and Chela, the teen-age
girl he hopes to adopt, the action is smoothly plotted and will keep
readers turning the pages. The characters are unusual and
well-delineated, and there is a sustained sense of uncomfortable and
troubling darkness at bay that is representative of the best of noir
fiction.

The man behind the series, actor Blair Underwood, is not as well known
as, for example,  Denzel Washington, but he is prettier, and may well be
one of his generation’s most underrated actors and creative
individuals. Ms. Due, who spent many years in journalism at newspapers
such as the Miami Herald, has been writing well-received fantasy novels
for years (her vampire novels especially should not be missed). Mr.
Barnes has written 23 novels, mostly in the science-fiction genre, and
together the two are one of the most talented, prolific, and successful
husband-and-wife writing teams today.


Atria; 365 pages; $26 

 


book_bridge.jpgThe Bridge: the Life and Rise of Barack Obama
Written by David Remnick

The concept of human bridges has a long
and honorable history. Far into antiquity the children of powerful
rulers and nobles were often sent to other countries as human bridges of
good will to ensure peace. That practice existed at least until well
into the 20th century, for example, when the children of the Thai prime
minister sent two of the children of his chief adviser to China to
become wards of then-Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai. They stayed for years.

In The Bridge, longtime New Yorker editor David Remnick portrays Barack
Obama as the living embodiment of the concept from a 21st-century
perspective. He portrays Obama as almost born to this role, from his
storied parentage to his early days at the Punahou school on Oahu (which
he charmingly describes as a sort of “Phillips Exeter
Academy-sur-mer”), then at Harvard, and later as an activist, author,
and conciliating politician.

The portrait of Obama as a bridge is in no way limited to the question
of race, although that may be paramount within his lifetime to date. Mr.
Remnick also writes of Obama as a presidential bridge across centuries
leading directly to Abraham Lincoln. And laterally, he discusses links
to Frederick Douglass as well. The writing is at once meaty and
sparkling.

The book is based on a huge range of sources, particularly first-hand
reportage and on-the-record access to most major players, including
Obama. It is that range of material that makes the book, together with
its subject, so fascinating. Also, Mr. Remnick’s use of the telling
detail to bring scenes alive—at which he is a master—gives readers an
almost visceral sensation of being an actual witness to history.

Though Mr. Remnick has gone as far as anyone regarding the president’s
childhood, it is perhaps particularly significant here. Obama is, in
fact, the son of an alcoholic father who abandoned the family; as the
Adult Children of Alcoholic’s movement and others have shown in the past
two decades, this has very specific documented results.

These and other childhood stressors at times seem to lead to
extraordinarily strong foundations for our human bridges, and it is
perhaps in this that we see evidence of one of Obama’s most far-reaching
strengths—a link to all those who have experienced these profound
childhood stresses but lack the advantages and voice that are so clearly
illustrated in The Bridge.

Knopf 656 pages; $29.95

 

 


book_unplayable.jpgUnplayable: an Inside Account of Tiger’s Most
Tumultuous Season
Written by Robert Lusetich

 

This somewhat gossipy account of Tiger
Woods’ annus horribilis is strong in an area that journalism these days
often finds difficult: it offers in-depth context. Each of the book’s
chapters focuses on a different tournament and looks at the courses, the
clubs, officials, and the golf legend’s friends and employees. It
contrasts his regular behavior with the chilly demeanor evident when he
is playing a major event, disconnecting even from his inner circle.

As did his pal Michael Jordan, Woods—one of the biggest sports stars in
the history of the world—had a tremendous sense of entitlement. There is
material about the friendship between these two men, who are legends
both on and off the court and course, and embody in their respective
sports the kind of money to be made via sports sponsorship. There is a
sense—somewhat off-putting—that Mr. Lusetich felt an almost personal
sense of betrayal in the wake of the disclosure of Mr. Woods’s
infidelity.

Atria Books; 269 pages; $26