Status
Genres
Publication
Description
Biography & Autobiography. Politics. Nonfiction. HTML: In A Fighting Chance, an unlikely political star tells the inspiring story of the two-decade journey that taught her how Washington really worksâ??and really doesn't As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacherâ??an ambitious goal, given her family's modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that changed her life: could she come to Washington DC to help advise Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws? Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost. She tried to hold the federal government accountable during the financial crisis but became a target of the big banks. She came up with the idea for a new agency designed to protect consumers from predatory bankers and was denied the opportunity to run it. Finally, at age 62, she decided to run for elective office and won the most competitiveâ??and watchedâ??Senate race in the country. In this passionate, funny, rabble-rousing audiobook, Warren shows why she has chosen to fight tooth and nail for the middle classâ??and why she has become a hero to all those who believe that America's government can and must do better for working… (more)
Similar in this library
User reviews
The Senator from Massachusetts tells a few stories of her life growing up scraping the bottom of the middle class barrel in Oklahoma before moving on to college with a scholarship and law school. She shares how she was drawn into bankruptcy law and eventually to Washington D.C. and the worse banking and housing crisis since the Great Depression. She talks cold turkey about politics and being a newcomer to D.C. and having the idea to form the Consumer Protection Agency, and her great disappoint at not being appointed its first director because she was “too radioactive.”.
She describes being a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and about meeting American’s across the country and asking the question: Who is the American government working for?
Ultimately, she notes, “People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here’s the painful part: They’re right. The system is rigged. Look around. Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOS—the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs –still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them.” She wants to celebrate success. But she, like so many of us, doesn’t want the game to be rigged.
I had the great opportunity to see the Senator speak in D.C. and I wanted to shout out at the end, “Run, Elizabeth, Run,” and by that I mean for President. She would have my vote.
Much of the book was about Warren's involvement in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which got a little boring, but I also know it's very important. I slogged through the parts about meetings and legislation, but by doing so, I gained a little bit more understanding about what led to the most recent financial crisis. Nothing surprising here, but big banks make horrible, selfish decisions, give A LOT of money to politicians, who are then too afraid to do anything to help the majority of people, and often no one is held accountable when things go wrong.
I missed the viral video going around in 2011 where Warren said this...
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
I'm glad there are people like Warren who have made some important changes and are still fighting the good fight.
All that being said, I really hesitate to give this book four stars, because it wasn't that enjoyable to read, I really didn't learn that much, and I never really wanted to pick up that book...I just felt like I needed to give it four stars.
Preaching to the choir (I never read opposition papers; why should I expect others to do so?), I doubt Warren changes any minds. But the numbers are too big
We need more like her in Congress.
The book is an account of the life of Senator Elizabeth Warren from her girlhood days in Oklahoma, through her
If you think everything is "all right" with our country or if you think everything is "a mess" this book will open your eyes and mind to the issues "We The People" face now and in the years ahead. We all owe Elizabeth Warren a debt of gratitude for what she has accomplished to date. She is an important voice in Congress for the people of Massachusetts and the rest of us as well.
Warren, of course, is not "most politicians," and perhaps not "most professors," either. Her first venture into electoral politics
Warren grew up the youngest of four children, the only one still at home when her father's heart attack and subsequent impaired ability to work derailed the family's modest financial security. In spare, clear terms, she describes the struggles of the years that followed, including the plain and painful fact that her dream of going to college and becoming a school teacher were apparently killed by the fact that her parents couldn't possibly afford to send her to college. She has to rescue her own dream by finding a scholarship she could win.
And after that, nothing goes the way she expects it. Early marriage, delayed education, the frustrations of being a young mother, an almost accidental entry into teaching law. An interest in bankruptcy law inspired by her parents' struggles, and further twists and turns leading to the determination and the opportunity to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. From there, I suspect anyone who is interested enough to be reading this knows at least the broad outlines of how that led to her decision to run for the Senate from Massachusetts. The details, both professional and her intertwined family life, are fascinating and compelling, though.
(I'm probably revealing nothing by saying that my politics are closer to Warren's than Brown's. However, he didn't help himself with his childish and bizarre attack on Warren's Native American ancestry. I'm another nearly sheet-white, light-eyed American with a proud family history including Native American ancestry. No, Mr. Brown, you can't tell by looking at someone, and no one appointed you arbiter of who gets to talk about their ancestry.)
Warren's accounts of meeting with voters and the stresses and strains of the campaign she never expected to run are particularly compelling.
Recommended.
I bought this book.
Sadly, she'll never be elected and I think it would be disastrous if she ran. Sadly, America is about the only civilized first world country I can think of where we're so ass backwards and socially/culturally retarded, not to say misogynistic, that I don't know if a woman can EVER be elected in this country. Reagan Republicans seemed to love Thatcher and I've heard good things about Germany's female chancellor, among others. Thatcher was a strong leader and admired for that trait by many, although her career ended with controversy, somewhat like Reagan/Bush I. Nonetheless, just as a recent example, Hillary Clinton -- who is NOT my favorite politician or person -- ran against Trump as everyone knows, AND she WON the general election by at least TWO MILLION votes, which for the second time this century (Bush/Gore) proved what a total fraud the concept of popular vote is in this country and always has been, per the Founding Fathers, who created the Electoral College under the guise of the US Everyman being too damn stupid to know who to vote for, let alone even how to vote. So, these idiots who the political bosses put in place to "represent" their constituencies sometimes do and sometimes don't, in the most recent case, voting Donald Trump into office over Clinton despite the obvious proven fact that the majority of American voters didn't want Trump to win, and thus Hillary was the lesser of two evils.
Let me tell you, I've heard all of the arguments against Hillary. Some are legit, many are total crap and ESPECIALLY when compared to probably the most unprepared, literally dead stupid, crooked, greedy lying traitor of a politician in American history. He literally knew nothing about anything when he was elected, most alarming foreign policy (and the Constitution). He immediately mistrusted, hated and ignored our intelligence agencies and has waged war against actual intelligent (sometimes), experienced experts and politicians by replacing thousands of them either with deadbeat know nothing donor cronies who want to shred the government or leaves hundreds of positions unfilled. He has praised the worst dictators and human rights abusers in the world while offending and pushing away virtually all of our traditional allies. Meanwhile, Clinton spent 8 years in the White House and actually knows a thing or two about the Constitution, statehood, and as a former Senator and Secretary of State, about a million times more than Trump could ever learn about foreign policy or anything else, for that matter. And while there are unproven rumors that she is corrupt, anyone who believes she is actually worse than an alleged pedophile who sells access to the White House and every perk asked of him to any bidder, as the easiest lay in DC, degrading the position of President unlike anything anyone has ever anticipated. I cannot understand how anyone can support that cretin, especially the damn evangelicals and fundies who finally showed their true colors in voting for one of the most immoral men in history so they could gain power and demolish the evil "liberals" and progressives, thus turning this country into a conservative oppressive theocracy -- the exact opposite of what our Founding Fathers wanted, and most likely their savior, Jesus, too.
In any event, I went on too long on that analogy, but that's how I view Warren's chances in this country. She shows she's more intelligent than most of the (Republican) men in the room, she's got good ideas, plans on how to implement them -- if the Ted Cruz's of the world would stop being traitors to the country and actually do what our former politicians always did dating back to A Jackson, and make some damn compromises, and hence, legislation, rather than destroying the country with infantile shutdowns. She'll be hated and despised because she's a strong woman who has guts, and for the life of me, I'll never understand this, but American women -- particularly the fundies -- HATE strong Democratic women -- but they show their hypocracy when they go gaga and rally around the biggest loser airhead in US political history, that Sarah person. So Warren is a great leader, a great politician, an infinitely better choice than Trump or any of the loonies on the hard right who really are little but traitors to their country, as proven by supporting Trump and Putin over the US and our Constitution. I realize this review has been more about current US politics and the dysfunctional state we're in than this book itself, but if you haven't caught on by now, I think the author and her book are great, and certainly infinitely moreso than the moron in office or anyone like him. That said, nearly any non-loony with a brain would be better than what's in office in 2020. Recommended!!!
I loved this book. Elizabeth Warren is an amazing woman who stands for principles I believe should be the vision for my country, the United States of America. Oddly enough, Senator Warren's sentiments seem to echo exactly what presidential nominee Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Socialist, is saying, but without his repetitive stump speech clichés. I know at this date that Senator Sanders most likely will not secure a presidential nomination due to the great number of Super PAC delegates not supporting him. .
I have taken the time to look into how American presidential primaries are run and see clearly how, as Elizabeth Warren says, the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy. It gives me hope that she won the office of Massachusetts senator. It pains me to see the psychological suffering she had to endure in order to gain this office.
I very much appreciate what Senator Warren has shared with us, her readers, and wish her continued success in all of her endeavors.
"All we want is a country where everyone pays a fair share, a country where we build opportunities for all of us, a country where everyone plays by the same rules and everyone is held accountable."
Fight on, Senator Warren!
This is the tenth book she has published, so it's not some ghost-written ripped-from-the-headlines piece of expedient crap. Elizabeth Warren is a good writer and a GREAT HUMAN BEING. This is a good read.