Elizabeth Warren

June 25, 2018
In this admiring biography, Felix (Michelle Obama: A Photographic Journey) examines the life and career to date of Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, known as the “Sheriff of Wall Street” for her long-running efforts to rein in the excesses of the banking industry. Felix glowingly narrates Warren’s “rise from a dusty, financially strapped Oklahoma childhood to academic and political prominence,” looking at how the driven Warren found her passion in high school debate, left school to get married and start a family, and later became a lawyer specializing in bankruptcy law, which led her to teaching at institutions such as Harvard. Portrayed as a tireless populist crusader, Warren eventually runs for Congress, where her “life work studying the economics of working Americans gives her unique insight into the plight of the largest-growing segment of the working class that is aspiring to be middle class.” Despite its obviously positive attitude toward its subject (the most controversial topic is Warren’s claim of Native American ancestry) and somewhat dull interludes of statistics on women in politics, this biography is thoroughly researched and accessibly written; Felix has a knack for translating the complexities of financial and legal issues into layperson’s terms. This is a worthy introduction to a prominent political figure. Agent: Esther Margolis, Newmarket Publishing Management.

June 15, 2018
"She works on the inside, but she's never considered herself an insider." A celebratory biography of the "brand-name populist" who many commentators expect will run for president in 2020.Sen. Elizabeth Warren, writes Felix (Michelle Obama: A Photographic Journey, 2017, etc.), comes by her advocacy for the struggling middle class honestly. Born in Oklahoma, she grew up in a household run by parents who, though they considered themselves middle-class, were just a couple of paychecks away from financial disaster--as happened from time to time. Confronting those realities as a lawyer with substantial training in economics and as a public intellectual committed to conveying her findings so that readers everywhere could understand them, Warren has emerged as a leader of the left wing of the Democratic Party, as well as a senator from Massachusetts, a long journey from her beginnings as a middle-state conservative. Felix writes uncritically and sometimes breezily, addressing her subject as a familiar: "It's a leap of faith to turn away from the sheltering walls of a university, and Elizabeth thought long and hard before jumping into the political chaos of the Bankruptcy Review Commission." The book is best understood as a fan's notes, though the author does a good job of digging evenhandedly into one of the central controversies surrounding Warren, the claim of Native American ancestry that has provided Donald Trump with the ugly slur "Pocahontas." That controversy well merits the several pages Felix devotes to it, which, as she notes, could not be explained in a media atmosphere "in the business of sound-bite drama, not social analysis." One can be sure that in the event that Warren declares for the presidency, the matter will be reignited, even as she has moved on to being a persistent--and persisting--critic of the rule of big money in electoral politics.Admirers of Warren will find this a welcome exaltation.

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September 1, 2018

Felix (Michelle Obama: A Photographic Journey) looks at the life and career of Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. After exploring Warren's family history, Felix turns to her subject's childhood in Oklahoma City. Although Warren's mother expected her to be a homemaker, Warren attended law school while raising her two children. After graduating, she taught at the University of Houston, then went on to specialize in bankruptcy law and obtain prestigious positions as a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. Felix analyzes Warren's professional achievements in a feminist context, demonstrating how her research and academic status were unusual among women at the time. Warren's work eventually led her to develop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and win a senatorial campaign. Felix details Warren's political accomplishments up to the present and showcases her popularity. The appendixes include several key speeches by the senator. VERDICT A complementary portrayal of a compelling political personality. Recommended for readers interested in Senator Warren, politics, and the lives of inspirational women.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2018
How apt that Mitch McConnell rebuked Warren with the words, Nevertheless, she persisted. Persistence, after all, has been the overriding theme of Warren's life. In the face of financial hardship, she earned a full-ride scholarship to George Washington University. Hers was one of the few female faces in her 1973 law-school class. And, like so many women of her generation coming-of-age during feminism's second wave, Warren juggled often-conflicting roles of wife and mother while building dual careers as a lawyer and professor. Defying odds, she emerged victorious over the popular incumbent Scott Brown in her campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. But it is perhaps in her role as presidential advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Warren was able to weaponize her signature brand of political activism in pursuit of her life's passion for middle-class justice. Felix deftly brings the backstory of this progressive icon to life in a detailed and revelatory look at one of the country's most admired and outspoken leaders.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)