(Little, Brown, $30)
“Hope is easier to embrace than reality,” said Kerry Luft in the Chicago Tribune. That might be the main conclusion readers arrive at after studying Jodi Kantor’s new book about Barack and Michelle Obama’s first 1,000 days in the White House. Kantor uses the first couple’s marriage to explore why the president has seemed a less assured chief executive than he was a 2008 campaigner, but Kantor’s reporting is most revealing about Michelle. The First Lady, who arrived in Washington with little appetite for politicking, is said to have become a force behind closed doors. The book’s juiciest gossip centers around her—her $515 sneakers, her distrust of former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, her eliciting an expletive-laced tirade from the press secretary. As Kantor sees it, life in D.C. has been suffocating for both Obamas, and they’ve adopted an “us-against-the-world” mentality that only adds to their isolation.
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Kantor also says Michelle signals that the 2012 campaign could be rejuvenating, since roles are clarified by battle, said Jeffrey Burke in Bloomberg.com. Still, the lasting impression Kantor’s book leaves is that the Obamas are unlikely to ever surrender their hope of being able to hold themselves—or at least their marriage—apart from politics. That hope “springs eternal” in these pages, “stoking frustration” for the first couple, and “playing a large part in the president’s uneven record.” Though there’s always the possibility that they wake to their myopia before they’re back in Hyde Park for good, “there’s little in The Obamas to make one expect a second act.”
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”