Mild Michelle Obama

[Nonno]

Mild Michelle Obama - Forbes.com

It's unfortunate that Michelle is such a dull book. The story of a working-class black girl from the south side of Chicago, now on the cusp of becoming America's First Lady, must surely hold nuggets of dramatic tension, but you won't find them here.

Reading this book made me long for a writer like Curtis Sittenfeld, the novelist who imagined Laura Bush to life in American Wife, or an observer with the intimate access of Yasmina Reza, the French playwright who spent a year with France's now-president, Nicolas Sarkozy, before penning her book about him.

It's not that author Liza Mundy hasn't labored responsibly. Denied access to the Obamas for the purposes of this book (she had interviewed them in 2007 as a reporter for the Washington Post), she pounded the pavement, often literally, and turned up friends, family, teachers and colleagues willing to go on the record.

Michelle gained admittance to a multi-ethnic public magnet school, which spring-boarded her into Princeton--where a roommate's mother reacted with horror on learning that her daughter had been assigned to bunk with a black girl. Especially in the uncertain years of early adulthood, Michelle comes across as someone who looked around a little warily--or maybe nervously--even as she made academic and professional strides.

It is in giving this background and context to the Michelle Obama we see in the limelight that Mundy performs the book's greatest service. Indeed, in the acknowledgments, Mundy thanks her sources for having performed a "public service." Taken in that light, Michelle is not bad. Journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history, and as a first draft, the book does its job.

Amazon.com: Michelle: A Biography: Liza Mundy: Books