Joe Biden, Evan Osnos
Joe Biden, Evan Osnos
5 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Joe Biden
The Life, the Presidency, and What Matters Now

Author: Evan Osnos

Narrator: Evan Osnos, David Remnick

Unabridged: 4 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/06/2020


Synopsis

*A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR*
A concise, brilliant, and trenchant examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s successful lifelong quest for the presidency by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos.

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and disappointments that he has suffered.

Yet even as Biden’s life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors, and reversals of fortune. As he says, “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.” His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship—an essential quality as he leads America toward recovery and renewal.

Blending up-close journalism and broader context, Evan Osnos, who won the National Book Award in 2014, draws on nearly a decade of reporting for The New Yorker to capture the characters and meaning of 2020’s extraordinary presidential election. It is based on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members.

This portrayal illuminates Biden’s long and eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama’s vice president, his sojourn in the political wilderness after being passed over for Hillary Clinton in 2016, his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, and his choice of Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Osnos ponders the difficulties Biden faces as his presidency begins and weighs how a changing country, a deep well of experiences, and a rigorous approach to the issues, have altered his positions. In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy—a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.

The audiobook includes Evan Osnos's conversation with David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

About Evan Osnos

Evan Osnos has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008. His most recent book, Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, was a New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, which won the National Book Award. Previously, he was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, where he shared two Pulitzer Prizes. He lives with his wife and children near Washington, DC.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kate on November 22, 2020

A priest is being summoned to deliver Joe Biden his late rites. This is how the book begins. If you would have told me I’d be reading a non-fiction book about a politician a year ago, I would have said you were crazy. This year has me gobbling up every non-fiction book I can get my hands on… and this......more

Goodreads review by Raymond on April 01, 2021

This short book is a brief biography of Biden's life and political career up to the close of the 2020 presidential election. It gives a balanced view of the man focusing on his positive attributes, the well known tragedies in his life, and his many flaws such as his foot in mouth syndrome. I found t......more

Goodreads review by 8stitches 9lives on October 26, 2020

Please note: this review is of the book and not the man himself or his politics. With only a week to go until the US election, I felt I should learn a little more about Biden as a person as I realise I know almost nothing about an individual who could soon be president of one of the world's superpow......more

Goodreads review by Fiza on December 21, 2020

'Joe Biden: American Dreamer' is a concise book chronicling the main attributes & personality traits of the current President elect of America. It talks about the past ideals he stood for as well as his failings. It talks about his activity at the Senate & how destiny through a series of events mana......more

Goodreads review by Edward on March 01, 2024

And just like that, I have completed my journey to read a biography about every US President!!!!!!!!!......more