1 of 1 copy available
There's very little that's conventional about Kamala Harris, and yet her personal story also represents the best of America. She grew up the eldest daughter of a single mother, a no-nonsense cancer researcher who emigrated from India at the age of nineteen in search of a better education. She and her husband, an accomplished economist from Jamaica, split up when Kamala was only five.
The Kamala Harris the public knows today is tough, smart, quick-witted, and demanding. She's a prosecutor—her one-liners are legendary—but she's more reticent when it comes to sharing much about herself, even in her memoirs. Fortunately, former Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Morain has been there from the start.
In Kamala's Way, he charts her career from its beginnings handling child molestation cases and homicides for the Alameda County District Attorney's office and her relationship as a twenty-nine-year-old with the most powerful man in the state: married Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a relationship that would prove life-changing. Morain takes readers through Harris's years in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, explores her audacious embrace of the little-known Barack Obama, and shows the sharp elbows she deployed to make it to the US Senate. He analyzes her failure as a presidential candidate and the behind-the-scenes campaign she waged to land the Vice President spot. Along the way, he paints a vivid picture of her values and priorities, the kind of people she brings into her orbit, the sorts of problems she's good at solving, and the missteps, risks, and bold moves she's made on her way to the top.
Kamala's Way is essential reading for all Americans curious about the woman standing by Joe Biden's side.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
January 12, 2021 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781797124063
- File size: 309763 KB
- Duration: 10:45:20
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Anyone who watched the inauguration already knows the outline of Kamala Harris's life story. A former California senator, she's the first person of Afro-Caribbean and East Indian descent to be elected to the office of vice president. This audiobook seeks to fill in some of the details. Soneela Nankani offers an even narration. Her tone suits the material, and her pace is good, making the material easy to follow. However, the author, a West Coast newspaper reporter, includes numerous anecdotes and backstories about tangential figures and California politics that slow the narrative, especially for listeners from other states. Overall, though, listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of this groundbreaking political figure. R.G.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine -
January 25, 2021
Journalist Morain delivers a well-informed yet somewhat impersonal look at Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s journey to the White House. The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants who met as UC Berkeley graduate students and were active in the civil rights movement, Harris was “wheeled to demonstrations in a stroller.” After graduating from UC Hastings College of the Law, she became an Alameda County prosecutor in 1990 and quickly established connections with powerful people, including California assemblyman and future San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, whom she dated in the mid-1990s (the couple attended the Academy Awards together and once flew on Donald Trump’s private jet, Morain reveals). As San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Harris became known for her anti–death penalty stance and support for a controversial anti-truancy law. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, Harris gained national attention for her tough questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during congressional hearings. Morain stuffs his account with details of California politics and skillfully mines Harris’s public comments for information, but doesn’t get far beyond her public persona. Still, this is a brisk and evenhanded account of Harris’s trailblazing career.
-