the long alliance book review

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Joe Biden listens as Barack Obama speaks, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting, in December 2012.

The Long Alliance review: sure guide to Biden and Obama’s imperfect union

Gabriel Debenedetti masters the crosscurrents of the Democratic party as well as relations between two presidents

G abriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York magazine. His first book brings depth and context to the near-two-decade relationship between the 44th and 46th presidents. Under a telling subtitle, The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama , Debenedetti captures the two men’s closeness – and distance.

The Long Alliance emphasizes that the pair’s time in power together was not a buddy movie. Obama was the star. Biden played a supporting role until he too seized the brass ring, to send Donald Trump into exile.

Obama was a first-term senator, just 47 years old, when he vanquished the Clintons, bulldozed John McCain and entered the White House. Biden’s trajectory was markedly different. Late in life, on his third quest for the presidency, he took down another septuagenarian amid a deadly pandemic.

The union of Obama and Biden was always moored in intergenerational convenience. Obama was the agent of change, Biden a relic of an older time. Obama’s aides cast a wary eye toward the senator from Delaware. To Biden, politics was tactile. He did not readily inspire.

Walloped by Obama in Iowa in 2008, Biden immediately withdrew. Over time, the two men bonded. There was greater warmth between them than between Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, let alone Bush and Dan Quayle. Obama always heard Biden out. On the other hand, the Obamas never invited the Bidens to the White House residence. Barack and Joe shared lunches, not dinners and movies with popcorn.

Hiccups and speed bumps left marks. Biden got ahead of Obama on gay marriage. Hunter Biden made headlines with his schemes and hustles. Confronted with the younger Biden boy’s foray into Ukraine and the energy business, Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, expressed discomfort . Like Trump, Hunter’s fate now rests with federal prosecutors.

Obama empathized with his vice-president. When Beau Biden, Biden’s older son, was dying, Obama offered a shoulder to lean on. He delivered a stirring eulogy. In their final days in office, Obama gave Biden the presidential medal of freedom. The honor, suffused with affection and tenderness, surprised its recipient. Biden’s successor as vice-president, Mike Pence, met a very different fate.

Yet for all Obama’s smarts, he could get things terribly wrong. He failed to anticipate the magnitude of the backlash to the Affordable Care Act, the resonance of birtherism, abhorrent as it was, and the depth and breadth of the emerging national chasm beneath him. Democratic losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterms and the Tea Party with its tricorn hats presaged a sustained demand for a return to the past, the rise of Trump and a tolerance for autocracy within the Republican party.

Obama also messed up by viewing Hillary Clinton as his rightful successor, if not his political heir. In 2008, competing against her for the nomination, he derided her as “likable enough”. In 2016, in hindsight, little had changed.

Clinton lacked her husband’s capacity to emote and connect. Like Ted Cruz, the Republican Texas senator, there was something awkward, off-putting, which she could not shake. Her comments on Trump’s “deplorables” hurt her much as Mitt Romney’s take on the “47%” did him in 2012. Looking back, Obama miscalculated – much as his brain trust would do in 2020 with Biden.

Under Trump, Romney showed a deeper appreciation of where the US stood. It wanted a president not named Trump. A shot at normalcy. Nothing else.

On the night of the 2018 midterms, Romney urged Biden to wage one more campaign. “You have to run,” Romney said in a call. Anti-Trump sentiment cost the Republicans the House but at the same moment Utah was sending Romney to the Senate.

During the 2020 primaries, Obama and Biden stayed in touch. But until the former vice-president emerged as the presumptive nominee, his president’s endorsement was not forthcoming. Biden lost Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada. Heading to South Carolina, he was low on cash and short on delegates. There, the backing of James Clyburn, the House whip, together with the state’s Black voters, righted Biden’s ship. Debenedetti shows mastery of the tugs and crosscurrents that shape the Democrats’ upstairs-downstairs coalition.

African Americans could be among the most socially conservative components of the party. They were not clamoring for open borders or Medicare for All. Obamacare stood as the legacy of the first Black president. Their patrimony was the cruel lash of slavery, not the Harvard faculty lounge or the yoke of the tsar. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did not speak to them or for them.

Michelle Obama kisses Joe Biden at the White House on 7 September.

Obama aides badmouthed Biden in print and on TV. David Axelrod, a senior Obama campaign and White House hand, never cottoned to Biden, and Biden knew it. And yet, behind the scenes, Obama helped clear the field.

In the end, Covid and the need for national leadership put Biden over the top. No other Democrat could have beaten Trump.

A s president, Biden’s record is uneven. The withdrawal from Afghanistan put a dent in his standing from which he has not recovered. In contrast, US support for Ukraine appears the product of thoughtful conviction. As for the economy, Biden’s efforts to placate his base may well have heightened inflation. Gas prices are coming down but the rest remains stubbornly up.

Biden competes with Obama’s legacy and the ghost of FDR. The Democrats hold only 50 Senate seats, control on a knife-edge as the November election looms.

“I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” Biden reportedly told one adviser , according to another big political book, This Will Not Pass by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, of the New York Times and CNN respectively.

The two men still talk, though.

The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama is published in the US by Macmillan

Barack Obama
Biden administration
Obama administration
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THE LONG ALLIANCE

The imperfect union of joe biden and barack obama.

by Gabriel Debenedetti ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2022

A readable portrait of a political partnership that may be seen as one of the most productive in U.S. history.

Carefully constructed study of the alternately “tense, affectionate, nonexistent, and ironclad” bond between a president and his vice president.

By any measure, Barack Obama was less accomplished as a politician than Joe Biden when the former was elected senator. Despite inexperience, though, Obama had far more buzz around him as savior of a battered Democratic Party, for which reason he attracted attention, money, and a following large enough to win him the presidency. It must have rankled when that happened, but, as New York Magazine politics reporter Debenedetti shows, Biden easily adapted to the role of vice president. Over the next eight years, the relationship was sometimes stretched thin, in part because Biden was seen as the more willing negotiator on Capitol Hill than Obama, with Biden “always sure he could find common ground with GOP leaders he’d known for years,” leaders who often proved unwilling to work with Obama at all. Even there, Biden sometimes failed; in a particularly telling moment, Debenedetti analyzes the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, when it seemed possible that gun control legislation might be passed quickly if Obama and Biden acted immediately. Always cautious and methodical, they didn’t. The GOP closed ranks, and Obama became more cynical in his remaining time in office: “If a heart-shredding national tragedy—twenty little kids murdered —wasn’t going to jar the GOP into cooperation, they were never going to get serious and work with him on anything, were they?” If Obama is now seen as a senior statesman, Biden is president—and not because Obama went out of his way to help during the primaries, when, Debenedetti writes, he was bent on being “free to candidate-surf.” The Obama-Biden alliance is healthier now, and while differences remain, both know that they speak to each other as “the only other person who could possibly begin to understand.”

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-82997-9

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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Book: Tim Allen Exposed Himself to Pamela Anderson

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Who’s the Change Agent Now?

Joe biden is delivering breakthroughs that long eluded barack obama. who understands the presidency best.

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

Barack Obama has kept a vanishingly small circle of trust in his post-presidency, and for much of this summer, any visitors who got a moment with him and dared to ask about Joe Biden’s tanking administration tended to get no substantive answer. Ever since leaving the White House in 2017, Obama has been cautious to the point of introversion about wading into daily politics, but through June and deep into July, he was noticeably cagey even with buddies — wary that a leak about any level of concern on his part would create a hellish news cycle. Content to watch from afar on Martha’s Vineyard, where he and former First Lady Michelle have a 29-acre home and a personal chef, Obama followed the news closely as Biden’s agenda stalled out, then was ground down by inflation and gas prices and an unconvincing response to the demise of Roe v. Wade.

From his perch on an island 500 miles north of the White House, Obama spoke with Biden sporadically. As always, their calls were private and no aides listened in. But as the summer wore on, Obama’s small group of confidants gathered that Biden was impatient with his dismal approval numbers, which rivaled Donald Trump’s. They thought Biden seemed sensitive about the fact that among Democratic candidates running for office in November, the 44th president will be a far more coveted surrogate than the 46th. (One private party poll in the battleground state of Arizona showed Biden’s favorability at a putrid 26 percent.) And it seemed to them that the president was annoyed with some members of his own party, especially regarding what he saw as their fatalistic attitude about the midterms. (The White House disputes these impressions.)

Given the hit Biden took after the abortion ruling, some of Obama’s close allies were baffled by Biden’s similarly uninspiring reaction to the July 4 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that left seven people dead and dozens wounded. As a handful of ambitious Democrats made micromoves that could position them to run in Biden’s stead in 2024, Obama said nothing, either publicly or through back channels. He stayed mum when Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker visited the early-voting state of New Hampshire, and he didn’t reach out to bring Gavin Newsom in line after the California governor rather conspicuously began buying airtime in Florida and newspaper ads in Texas. Much of Obama’s reluctance to engage was tactical; he didn’t want to overshadow the sitting president or get dragged into a new role as Biden’s enforcer, and he’d already determined that he would be most effective as an advocate for the party if he lay low until just before the midterms. Still, coming from the most popular Democrat, Obama’s distancing had the effect of heightening Biden’s isolation, as an idea began to take hold in the public imagination that one of them knew how to be a successful president and the other didn’t.

And then, as if out of nowhere, came a very Washington version of deliverance. An agreement between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the fickle West Virginia senator Joe Manchin to make world-historic climate investments and deflate drug prices headlined a run of nearly miraculous news for Biden’s White House. It was the kind of concerted environmental effort Democrats had dreamed of for years, if not decades, and even progressives who wanted more conceded it would make for a genuine sea change in the government’s approach to the existential threat of climate change. The deal came on the heels of the bipartisan passage of a semiconductor-chip-manufacturing bill, and it cast in a better light a June compromise to enact limited gun-control measures, alongside other legislation of substance. (It didn’t hurt that in this stretch Biden had ordered the drone killing of Al Qaeda’s leader and gas prices fell by more than a dollar.) “There is no way to get around the fact the last month or so has been stellar for the administration,” Charles M. Blow declared in the New York Times. “Joe Biden’s Presidency Is Suddenly Back From the Dead,” Jonathan Chait wrote in this magazine. Bob Shrum compared him to Lyndon Johnson.

Nobody was under any illusion that Biden had personally crafted the climate deal or artfully twisted the right arms to get it done. More accurately, it fell into his lap — months after he’d last tried to cut a compromise on his Build Back Better plan with Manchin. If Biden could have made it happen sooner, he would have. But just as presidents can fall victim to external disasters over which they have little control (see gas prices), history remembers even indirect victories as their own, too. What Biden did was leave the door open to a bargain, recognizing the awkward reality that Schumer and Manchin had more space to maneuver without his voice in the mix complicating the politics that faced the prickly moderate from coal country. Biden and Schumer had also allowed Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell to believe the administration’s climate ambitions were toast; the prevailing theory in Washington is that the Kentuckian agreed to the chips bill only because he trusted that the big-ticket ones were dead.

If Biden’s abrupt turnaround can be attributed to a style of governance that is still emerging, that style is decidedly un-Obaman. The crown-jewel victory — the Inflation Reduction Act, containing the climate provisions — was painstakingly lashed together in secret by a crew of senators, including longtime denizens of Biden’s old stomping ground. The president’s own hand was nowhere to be seen in public until it was on the verge of passage, an echo of how the maximally precarious gun bill had moved through Congress a few weeks earlier. Whether because of changing times and opposition or recognition of their fundamentally distinct political strengths, Biden has veered far from the Obama model to get things done. It’s been months since he mounted a concerted effort to galvanize public opinion with the presidential bully pulpit, and he has never attempted to use an academic style of persuasion, as Obama often did.

Obama was elated to learn of the climate agreement. But as the ex- and current president celebrated, a telling gap began to open. Biden’s West Wing sold the Inflation Reduction Act as the largest climate investment ever, period. Publicly, Obama agreed, calling the law a “BFD” — a nod for nostalgists to Biden’s famous appraisal of Obamacare. Privately, however, Obama saw the legislation as a step forward — a bend in the long arc of history he often cites — and not a transformative leap. It was possible to read this as sour grapes, or at least wry analysis, from a retired president whose own grandest ambitions had been thwarted at almost every turn. Yet no one on earth understood what Biden was facing better than the man who’d held the job for eight years. The two simply saw change-making differently. Obama, in fact, had been getting updates from Schumer all summer and had been quietly musing that a climate plan might be revivable, fashioned from the surviving shreds of Biden’s Build Back Better platform. He just hadn’t necessarily seen the idea as an epochal one — more like a pragmatic concession that Biden’s original ambitions couldn’t work in this version of Washington. The difference in perspective speaks to one of the oldest lines of tension in Obama and Biden’s relationship and a question that is now more pressing than ever: What is the right way to be a Democratic president?

Neither man’s approach has been static, especially as Republican opposition has escalated from obstruction to nakedly anti-democratic sabotage. Obama entered office in 2009 with large partisan majorities, confident in his rhetorical abilities to unite the country and persuade voters to enact sweeping change, but GOP intransigence hardened his view of what was achievable and left him increasingly reliant on the unilateral powers of his office. He still used his megaphone to urge the electorate toward pluralism in moments of need, but by 2016, he was giving exit interviews about the difficulty of turning ocean liners more than a few degrees at a time. Biden observed all that from a closer vantage point than anyone, and in 2021, he took the oath of office with an altogether different strategy in mind. Although he had only a minuscule edge in Congress, he was convinced that his long decades in the Senate made deal-making possible again — both with members of his own party and with a small, theoretical group of Republicans eager to get some things done after the embarrassments and incompetence of the Trump years. Finding little success in trying to be the country’s protagonist or pastor, Biden settled into a significantly quieter and less confrontationally progressive posture even as he kept his faith in the legislative process to eventually deliver him big wins. Though his achievements were often overshadowed by a generalized perception of feebleness and unrelenting demonization from Republicans, he began to rack up major policy victories.

Seismic as it is, the climate law hardly rescues Biden from his doldrums. The presidency is about much more than legislation, and early polling suggests his approval rating has rebounded only modestly. Yet to a degree that would have been unthinkable in the depths of summer, when Biden seemed all but dead politically, it is now possible to debate whether his first two years or Obama’s were more substantively successful.

Today’s Obama-Biden dynamic would be unrecognizable to a voter from 2008, back when Obama was the change-maker and Biden his elder realist and fixer. Their roles haven’t exactly reversed, but it’s striking that Obama is now more identified with piecemeal progress and Biden with a process that can be ugly and lurching but does occasionally deliver dramatic breakthroughs. Back at the start of his presidency, Obama sought to enact the most dramatic reform of the American health-care system in history, and he overruled the advisers who told him that he was being unrealistic about the political window — none of them resisting so loudly as Biden. Universal access to medical insurance was a priority for the left, but the vice-president argued that voters would give Obama “a pass on this one” if he focused on the economy, which was still teetering on the brink of ruin in early 2009. Over a few weeks of meetings in the Roosevelt Room, Biden told Obama with increasing agitation that forcing a health-care overhaul could kneecap his presidency from the start. Insisting on this kind of historical loser — reforms had failed numerous times over the decades — in year one would swamp the rest of his agenda, Biden said. But Obama was unimpressed by Biden’s advice that he ought to focus on middle-class pocketbooks above all else. He figured, We’re already doing everything we know how to do for the economy , so all you’re proposing is giving up on health care. That was status quo D.C. thinking.

It was their first serious disagreement about how to surmount roadblocks to progress. Biden was joined by Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and his lead strategist, David Axelrod, who both tried to steer Obama to other priorities. But the president grew increasingly impatient with the arguments. “What are we supposed to do? Put our approval rating on the shelf and admire it for eight years?” he asked. “Or draw down on it and do things of lasting value?” On this much, Biden agreed; he just thought Obama should do health care in phases, not all at once. At one planning meeting, Biden listened to a procession of experts brief the president on a swath of policy changes, and eventually Biden tore into them for five excruciating minutes. This will never pass, we’ll get bogged down on it, and it will distract from everything else, he said, amazed that the room still couldn’t see what seemed obvious to him: They’d end up getting drubbed in the midterms with little or nothing to show for it. Obama shifted in his chair, his discomfort and impatience more obvious by the moment, as Biden’s voice rose to a yell. The president had already made his decision, and this wasn’t the cerebral way he wanted his policies determined.

Both Obama and Biden recognized the precariousness of the moment, but where the younger man saw opportunity for dramatic change that might yet shift the cynical culture of Washington and, more important, help Americans, the other feared his boss was missing a dire political reality. Biden came around once he saw that Obama wouldn’t be dissuaded. As the health-care push began in earnest, Obama took charge of the public-facing, political-slash-moral campaign and delegated vote wrangling to Emanuel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Even as some conservative Democrats began to voice skepticism about the cause and whether they could support it, Obama mostly left them alone; he didn’t want to spend all his time schlepping to the Capitol or inviting thirsty lawmakers to the White House residence to hang out. And he was sure that when it came time to vote, the holdouts would come through for their party. He was unwilling to be the one to woo or strong-arm them so early, figuring his political influence should be held in reserve until it was absolutely needed.

Biden watched all of this with curiosity. His style of negotiation was different: Not only did he want a lot more face time with counterparties than Obama, but he also liked to start at a point of basic agreement and build, adding pieces that each side wanted. Obama, in contrast, usually started from his ideal spot and negotiated down to a place of mutual acceptance, and he didn’t much like doing it. Biden was starting to suspect that Obama didn’t enjoy negotiating — or members of Congress — at all. He wasn’t hanging around with guests at White House receptions, and he rarely had his former Senate colleagues over for strategy sessions. It was all stuff that Biden would’ve loved to do as president but that Obama thought was superfluous and, often, bullshit.

That summer of 2009, neither Obama nor Biden knew quite how to deal with the wave of organized conservative fury that arose in opposition to the health-care effort, as epitomized by Sarah Palin’s ludicrous but effective claims about “death panels.” The GOP pollster Frank Luntz had circulated a 28-page memo coaching the party’s representatives to describe the health-care plan as a “Washington takeover,” since “takeovers are like coups — they both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom. What Americans fear most is that Washington politicians will dictate what kind of care they can receive.” At one of their regular private lunches that year, Obama asked Biden how and why Republicans suddenly seemed to be in perfect lockstep against him. Biden gave an assessment that in time would become the conventional wisdom but then felt fresh: The sickness had begun with Newt Gingrich and his acolytes, who viewed comity with Democrats as per se unacceptable, and things had been worsened by reforms to the earmarking process and an explosion of outside money in politics. Obama listened and considered it all quietly. This was why he’d chosen Biden. But the explanation didn’t much alter his tactics.

As Washington got colder and negotiations with Capitol Hill dragged on, the senior White House staff gathered for strategy sessions and carefully went through a list of senators to make sure they knew where each one stood. Whenever they worried that one was wavering, they would turn to the front of the room and gauge Obama’s interest in engaging him or her. Quickly, they figured out that this wasn’t his preferred way to spend his time but that Biden was eager to be dispatched and he and Reid could coordinate an effective approach for his ex-colleagues. Biden managed to keep several wobbly centrists in the fold, calling them regularly to say he understood their political incentives.

Obama rarely drank in office, and Biden didn’t drink at all, but after the bill passed, the president gathered his VP and a small group of senior aides to celebrate over martinis in late March 2010. Obama was exhausted, and his outlook on the condition of Washington was calcifying, but that night his confidence was radiating and his glee was evident. Biden was downright impressed it had actually worked. This was the massive overhaul for millions of Americans that Democrats had been chasing since he was a baby. After Obama signed the bill into law at a public event, the pair walked off side by side, clasping each other’s backs, like nothing could separate them.

If reality and opposition have a way of ambushing presidents, it’s up to them whether to adapt or bulldoze — or whether to learn any lessons at all. Fresh off his reelection in 2012, Obama put aside his planned remarks at a Cabinet meeting and began to riff. He predicted that they were entering a new era. If the vote had shown anything, it was that the politics of obstruction had failed, Obama said, and Americans wanted to see Washington drop pure partisanship and tackle important issues. He’d told donors that he thought “the fever may break” once he won again “because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.” Now, he continued, it was time for his Cabinet to think big.

Obama didn’t know that he was about to embark on a five-month slide that would turn his hope into the purest cynicism anyone had ever seen from him. Obama usually hid his anger or expressed it in sarcasm, but after the Sandy Hook massacre that December, and the failure to pass gun-control legislation the following April, he seethed. If the murder of 20 little kids wasn’t going to jar GOP lawmakers into cooperation, they were never going to get serious and work with him on anything, were they? No, he concluded. Nothing had changed.

This was the great inflection point for Obama: He saw the political earth as salted. For Biden, however, it was instructive but not decisive. He saw that even the Republicans he considered reasonable were drifting away faster than he’d realized, but he still thought he could get more done across the aisle if given slightly more time and room to maneuver. In his eyes, there was no choice. Even before that December’s horror, Biden’s faith on this point had begun to irritate many of his fellow Democrats, some of whom suspected that the Washington lifer was more interested in process than substance. Reid, for one, had spent the first term privately dismissing the idea that Biden was Obama’s true Senate whisperer. Reid and Biden were friendly but had never been especially close, and Reid considered Biden both overly talkative and overly self-assured. He sometimes told friends about the time he and Biden had faced each other on a plane from Dallas to D.C. Looking at a clock above Biden’s head, Reid timed him speaking for three hours and 18 minutes of the three-hour-and-20-minute flight.

McConnell had a comically similar story about Biden. (The main differences were that the flight had two legs and landed in Raleigh.) But he at least could stand Biden, whereas he plainly disdained Obama, describing his negotiation sessions with the president as visits to the principal where he’d get a condescending lecture about how wrong he was before he could say a word. The dislike went both ways. Obama understood, correctly, that McConnell would never negotiate in good faith. There was little Obama hated more than the common D.C.-insider-crowd insistence that he’d get more done legislatively if only he’d socialize more in town. As he put it at 2013’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, “Some folks still don’t think I spend enough time with Congress. ‘Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ they ask. Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?”

Biden didn’t like that joke. In the long list of Bidenisms, one of his favorites was his promise never to question his colleagues’ motives. He considered maintaining a good working relationship with McConnell an important part of his job. They disagreed on almost everything but thought they understood each other’s politics, even if Biden thought McConnell was overhyped as a tactician and McConnell considered Biden a bit buffoonish. The relationship rarely bore fruit, but it suited Biden and McConnell both; in 2011, Biden had even visited the McConnell Center in Louisville to give a speech about bipartisanship. To some in Obama’s inner circle, this was the whole problem. Biden fashioned himself too much of a conciliator, they thought, and McConnell — who in 2010 admitted his goal was to make Obama “a one-term president” — was playing him.

This conviction was hardly diluted by Biden’s insistence that the White House was always one deal away from breaking the obstruction. Yet in his negotiations, Biden was always clear that he wasn’t the final decision-maker — Obama was. That’s why he, too, was often frustrated: It was common to hear Biden gripe to his aides that Obama was missing opportunities on the Hill by refusing to talk to his former colleagues. “It’s like Obama is at a dinner table he’s never been at before and doesn’t know it’s appropriate to ask them to pass the salt,” he’d say in moments of candor. “There are just things he could do that he isn’t doing that are offending people. Obama’s view is they’re never going to move. But they’re people! They can be influenced!”

And in the final hours of 2012, it was Biden’s time to prove his point. The so-called fiscal cliff was looming — an ugly combination of painful slashes to government programs and tax increases that would automatically go into effect if the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress couldn’t agree on a fix. After weeks of wrangling, McConnell had walked away from Obama and Reid and — with barely a day before the deadline — asked for Biden. The VP was thrilled to oblige at this late hour, coming up with a plan with McConnell to maintain Bush-era cuts for people earning under $400,000 and to impose a small tax hike on the wealthiest Americans.

To many in the party, it was yet another handout to the rich and not worth pursuing if the alternative — going off the cliff — might make the public realize just how extreme the Republicans’ tactics had become. On Capitol Hill, liberals were incensed and some moderates struggled to understand why they shouldn’t hold out, figuring that McConnell had rolled Biden and that the Democratic Party would lose its leverage on pocketbook issues. Reid warned the caucus to treat Biden with respect but said he wouldn’t pressure them to go along with the VP. The measure passed — Obama wanted it to, and no one wanted to be blamed for yet another economic crisis — but Reid in particular struggled to move on.

Later that year, he listened, aghast, as Biden spoke up at an Oval Office negotiation that was intended to avert a government shutdown being forced by Senator Ted Cruz. “We don’t want you to lose; we want you to win,” the vice-president said to McConnell. He’d meant he wanted it all to be resolved in a way that was acceptable to the part of the GOP he could still deal with, but Reid called Obama after the session for some blunt talk. He still liked Biden, he said, but Obama needed to bar him from this negotiation. Reid knew he could call Republicans’ bluff and make the shutdown more politically painful for them than for Obama. The president listened as Reid continued: We can’t have Biden swooping in to make some deal with McConnell to reopen the government and let Republicans declare victory.

Biden thought this perspective misread their mandate. When they needed GOP cooperation to pass anything, or even to keep the government open, he had to engage his hyperactive deal-making mode. It would be a different conversation if Democrats had unified control of Washington with enough of a margin to pass whatever they liked, but they no longer did and he was skeptical of Obama’s faith in the power of public campaigning to create enough political pressure on the opposition to do much of anything. The real work had to happen between handshakes.

Obama agreed with Reid but stayed antsy and asked for regular updates. It took 16 days for the right-wingers to cave. Reid never let any of his aides disparage Biden in front of Obama. But the message he gave the president was the polite version of a refrain among some advisers in his office and some of the VP’s critics within the White House, too: “Biden’s too horny for a deal.”

It was impossible to miss how much space Obama took up in Biden’s mind as he began his own term as president. Biden was irritated by the idea, occasionally shared on cable and especially in some corners of the conservative press, that Obama had somehow carried him to electoral victory, that he was still pulling the strings, or that Biden would simply be Obama 2.0. Yet when he gathered aides for meetings in the Oval Office, Biden pointedly sat in the exact same spot Obama had for eight years, and for a while he referred to his predecessor’s accomplishments and remembered White House procedures as “the way we did it” in “our administration.” For his first few months in office, he spoke openly of learning the hard lessons of that tenure and leveraging them to far greater effect.

At the same time, he occasionally vented to allies that he was floored to learn how much of the Obama years’ progress had been unwound by Trump. He found himself occupied with the question of how to first restore it, then how to cement his own accomplishments to ensure they couldn’t be rolled back by the next Republican president. As a result, one of his most frequent contentions was that his administration had to be far more intentional about selling the stuff he was passing to keep it popular, a point he’d tried making to Obama about their first big bill back in 2009 — a stimulus to get the country out of the subprime-mortgage and financial crises, which they opted not to brag about as other crises arose.

He excitedly viewed the American Rescue Plan Act — his nearly $2 trillion COVID-targeted relief bill — as an opportunity to test the proposition. Biden welcomed the obvious comparisons to Obama’s stimulus, and he made sure the legislation was packed with purposely easy-to-understand and popular provisions designed to make an immediate impact. Shortly after it passed the House in late February 2021, he appeared virtually for a gathering of congressional Democrats and promised them that he wouldn’t repeat Obama’s error. “We didn’t adequately explain what we had done. Barack was so modest he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap.’ I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility,” Biden recalled.

The American Rescue Plan’s passage was an almost ostentatious rapid-fire display of lessons learned. With the excruciatingly drawn-out Obamacare experience of 2009 and 2010 in mind, Biden took one meeting with Senate Republicans, listened to their proposal to cleave the plan to about a third of its size, and rejected it. One immense advantage Biden enjoys is that parliamentary norms have changed. Obama entered office in an era that demanded 60 votes in the Senate, but by now simple-majority legislating — the use of the once-obscure process known as reconciliation — is so common on major bills as to be unremarkable. Biden had embraced some progressive-policy aggression during the campaign, and he was unwilling to let Republican foot-dragging get in the way of progress if he didn’t need GOP votes in the first place. He also advocated for fitting as many programs as possible into this one bill. Biden was under no illusions that he could return to the drawing board for a second round of funding legislation if he needed to — another mistaken assumption more than a decade earlier. When the bill briefly appeared to be imperiled by last-minute hesitancy from Manchin, Biden called him directly and worked with Schumer to address his concerns, managing to keep all 50 Democratic senators onside.

It looked like Biden had cracked the governing code, improbably delivering the kind of widely celebrated change he’d campaigned on. But Biden’s bliss soon crashed. His chaotic exit from Afghanistan dovetailed with a resurgent COVID variant and ever more fevered Republican recalcitrance, and by late summer 2021, hardly anyone remembered the specifics of the relief bill Biden put so much stock into selling. The follow-up social-spending bill he proposed had a forbiddingly long road to being taken seriously by many lawmakers, let alone passing.

The parallels to Obama’s most frustrating moments were inescapable. Biden once liked to point out that McConnell had given a tribute to him on the Senate floor about their mutual trust and had even named a cancer-research-funding provision of a bill after Biden’s deceased son, Beau. Four months into Biden’s presidency, though, McConnell said that “100 percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” an echo of his 2010 pledge to ensure Obama served a single term. No one was too surprised a few weeks later when the third-ranking GOP senator, John Barrasso, raised the bar by arguing that Biden should be “a one-half-term president.”

At the same time, Biden was distracted by infighting on his own side with Democratic centrists threatening combat against progressives who wanted him to pursue even more massive social investments. For months, Biden seemed like both a victim of his own floridly set expectations of a new FDR-inspired era — an idea that blossomed back when he’d expected a more heavily Democratic Senate — and a man who could learn only so many new tricks as he approached the sixth decade of his life in elected office. Even among his supporters, it was possible to read Biden’s first 12 months as either a loose microcosm of the Obama years or, more likely, as their frustrating natural next step in the face of unrelenting right-wing attacks on the legitimacy of the democratic system itself.

Many around Biden didn’t know exactly how to feel this spring when Obama showed up at the White House for the first time since handing Trump the keys five years earlier. Biden understood that he simply wouldn’t be the center of anyone’s attention that Tuesday afternoon, and he settled into a familiar posture, half a step behind his former boss. When Obama stood at the microphones and promptly called the commander-in-chief “Vice-President Biden,” the sitting president waited half a beat before laughing rowdily, as if to signal to the cameras that he was in on the joke. Obama’s appearance was meant to be a mood booster, but not everyone in Biden’s immediate orbit found the gag all that funny, and some light grumbling about respect ensued within earshot of the White House press corps. Still, even the most fervent Biden loyalists seemed eager to soak in Obama’s nearly wistful glow for an afternoon to distract themselves from the president’s own sinking ratings and frustrations.

That was the context in which Obama watched his partner and successor on Martha’s Vineyard as the summer of 2022 began. They never spoke about what should come next — they still haven’t discussed 2024, as has been inaccurately reported. (Obama, though, is making initial plans to back candidates for governor and state-level offices that will administer that election.) But both have taken time to consider their joint and individual legacies, which sit at the edge of an anti-democratic abyss; each has privately admitted to feeling the weight of the moment as Trump acolytes amass primary wins and threaten the future of free elections.

As Biden’s polling sank on a Jimmy Carter–esque trajectory, it might have been reasonable to chalk up his initial legislative feats to a smart use of early but limited political capital — especially considering how quickly the Democratic coalition on the Hill then started to crack — and conclude all the other responsibilities of the Oval Office and the vectors of 2022’s unforgiving politics were simply swamping him. Yet that’s also why the climate-focused deal represented a genuine breakthrough for the 79-year-old president, who’d begun facing calls from some elected Democrats in Washington to retire. It appeared to reaffirm Biden’s essential approach to politics and his oft-contested theory of change: Dealmongering isn’t dead after all, no matter the president’s age or his political shortcomings and even if he isn’t the one directly negotiating the lines of legislative text. Presidents set the context.

Biden could well continue to suffer low approval ratings and the abandonment of factions of his party, even as he continues to deliver prizes of staggering scale. In late August, he said he would forgive hundreds of billions in student loans. Progressives complained loudly that he could have been even more generous; moderates expressed skepticism about the move’s political wisdom. It’s tempting to imagine what might have gone through Biden’s head after eight years at Obama’s side and now two on his own: Do you think the last Democrat would’ve done any better?

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The Long Alliance: the imperfect union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama

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The Long Alliance: the imperfect union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama Paperback – 13 Oct. 2022

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An in-depth look at the partnership between Barack Obama and Joe Biden that changed the face of American politics.

The ‘bromance’ between Obama and Biden has been much discussed, but this is the first time the full story of their relationship has been told: from their joint victory in 2008 to their disagreements over policy, and from the rift that formed after Obama supported Clinton’s 2015 presidential run to the present day with President Biden in the White House.

The Long Alliance examines the past, present, and future of the Obama–Biden legacy ― its twists and turns, ruptures and reunions, and how it has shaped and will continue to shape US politics.

Print length 432 pages
Language English
Publisher Scribe UK
Publication date 13 Oct. 2022
Dimensions 15.3 x 3.03 x 23.4 cm
ISBN-10 1913348199
ISBN-13 978-1913348199
See all details

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The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House

Product description

‘[A] careful chronicling and insightful examination … [Debenedetti] is an excellent reporter and he provides a satisfyingly detailed account of the 2020 presidential campaign from both leaders’ perspectives.’

‘[A] treat … readers interested in behind-the-scenes details and vividly depicted moments from the past two decades of American politics, starring some of its most pivotal players, will be riveted.’

‘Gabriel Debenedetti is simultaneously one of the smartest and most dogged reporters in Washington, and he has pieced together a master narrative of the complex relationship between two presidents whose partnership held together through a series of economic and political crises. The Obama-Biden dynasty has won three of the last four presidential elections, and Debenedetti’s story reveals the whole scope of its birth, growth, and struggle to save democracy.’

‘Gabriel Debenedetti’s reporting on the Biden-Obama relationship is a tour-de-force, weaving together the political and personal dynamics that have bonded these two presidents and, at times, led to significant tension. It is a gripping tale of power in modern America and how it really works, told by someone who knows the players and inside stories better than anyone.’

‘What progress is possible in a country defined by partisan stalemate? This is the immersive, indelible account of a twenty-year working friendship almost precisely coincident with the emergence of a new and often maddening American politics. Barack Obama and Joe Biden assumed their presidencies with different political strengths, instincts, and ideals, but though each believed he could outmanoeuvre opposition and achieve lasting generational change, each also quickly found himself contemplating legacies which, though historic, could seem painfully piecemeal ― including to the presidents themselves.’

‘Just when you thought there was nothing else to say about Biden and Obama, Washington’s most thoughtful observer, Gabriel Debenedetti, sheds new light on the friendship, alliance and differences between the two men who helped shape modern America. The Long Alliance delivers illuminating insights and intimate, riveting, sometimes unsparing details, and takes you inside the corridors of power and the struggle for America's future.’

‘Gabriel Debenedetti has written the definitive account of one of the most important ― and, until now, poorly understood ― relationships in 21st Century American politics. With rich new reporting, Debenedetti details the machinations that helped Joe Biden to parlay a hopeless presidential bid into a spot on Barack Obama’s 2008 ticket and a level of national prominence he’d never before known. More importantly, he illustrates the rocky and uneven evolution of their partnership during the Obama presidency. We see a genuine personal bond develop and deepen even as the president remains skeptical, dismissive even, of his handpicked vice president’s actual political talent ― arguably leading to the twist of history that makes Donald Trump president and leaves it to Biden, four years later, to prove to the world ― and to his former boss ― just what he is capable of.’

‘Gabriel Debenedetti masters the crosscurrents of the Democratic party as well as relations between two presidents.’

‘[A]n engrossing study of the political and personal relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama … Doggedly reported and clear-eyed about its subjects’ strengths and weaknesses, this is an illuminating portrait of a consequential political partnership.’

‘Carefully constructed … A readable portrait of a political partnership that may be seen as one of the most productive in US history.’

‘Debenedetti has written an engaging and thorough book about the Obama–Biden bond – an underexplored but fascinating subject. By delving into the relationship between two presidents, and suggesting reasons for its success, The Long Alliance also offers insights into how political power may be managed and shared. It is a thought-provoking book.’

About the Author

Gabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York Magazine , where he writes about politics and national affairs. Prior to joining the magazine in early 2018, he wrote about the 2016 campaign for Politico , traveling the country covering Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the Democratic Party. Before that, he reported on the Obama White House, the 2012 presidential election, and Capitol Hill for Reuters. He frequently appears on MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, the BBC, and NPR, and writes political reviews for The New York Times Book Review . His writing has also appeared in The Economist and The New Republic .

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribe UK (13 Oct. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1913348199
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1913348199
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.3 x 3.03 x 23.4 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 957,624 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

About the author

Gabriel debenedetti.

Gabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent at New York Magazine, where he writes about politics and national affairs. Previously, he covered politics for Politico and Reuters. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Economist, Vanity Fair, Politico Magazine, and the New Republic. A New Jersey native, he graduated from Princeton University.

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The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama

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An in-depth look at the partnership between Barack Obama and Joe Biden that changed the face of American politics.

The Long Alliance examines the past, present, and future of the Obama–Biden legacy ― its twists and turns, ruptures and reunions, and how it has shaped and will continue to shape US politics.

Print length 432 pages
Language English
Publisher Scribe Publications
Publication date 13 October 2022
Dimensions 15.3 x 3.03 x 23.4 cm
ISBN-10 1913348199
ISBN-13 978-1913348199
See all details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Product description

‘Gabriel Debenedetti masters the crosscurrents of the Democratic party as well as relations between two presidents.’

‘Carefully constructed … A readable portrait of a political partnership that may be seen as one of the most productive in US history.’

About the Author

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribe Publications (13 October 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1913348199
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1913348199
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 530 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.3 x 3.03 x 23.4 cm
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ United Kingdom
#663 in Political Parties (Books)
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Gabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York…

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Book Review: Jen Silverman’s gripping second novel explores the long afterlife of political violence

This book cover image released by Penguin Random House shows “There’s Going to Be Trouble” by Jen Silverman. Penguin Random House via AP)

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Earlier this year a former member of the far-left Baader-Meinhof gang who spent decades in hiding was arrested by German police in connection with a string of crimes. It was just another example of the long afterlife of the anti-war movement of the late 1960s, which Jen Silverman explores in a brilliant, beautifully written new novel, “There’s Going to Be Trouble.”

Titling it after a line from an Allen Ginsberg poem — “My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble” — Silverman constructs an intricate, clever plot that braids together two separate stories connected by the main characters.

One takes place in 1968 when Keen, an apolitical grad student at Harvard, gets drawn into the takeover of a campus building because of his desperate love for Olya, one of the organizers. When the demonstration goes awry, he must live with the disastrous results for the rest of his lonely life as a chemistry professor and single dad. His one consolation is the daughter Olya bore him before going on the run. Everyone calls her Minnow, though she will grow up to embody the fierceness of her namesake Minerva, the Roman goddess of war.

The second storyline unfolds in 2018 during the yellow vest protests in France, where Minnow, now a 38-year-old teacher, has fled after being engulfed in a scandal in the U.S. whipped up by the religious right for helping an underage girl at her school obtain an abortion. In Paris, she gets caught up with a group of activists who, like their counterparts a half century earlier, are willing to go to virtually any length to challenge what they see as the inequities of French society.

This book cover image released by Doubleday shows "The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook" by Hampton Sides. (Doubleday via AP)

Once again, love plays a decisive role. Just as her father fell head over heels for Olya, Minnow becomes enamored with Charles, the 23-year-old scion of a powerful French family whose father is a confidant of French President Emmanuel Macron. Though she has serious qualms about the 15-year age difference, she can’t keep her hands off him — and the feeling is mutual. Meanwhile, another brazen action is being planned that will also have deadly consequences.

Though the novel is a little slow to get off the ground and might have benefited from being 50 pages shorter, eventually it gathers unstoppable force as it moves toward a dramatic denouement that offers no easy conclusions. The questions Silverman poses about the ends and means of political violence are as relevant today as they were in the ’60s — or, for that matter, any era.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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Book Review: Jen Silverman’s gripping second novel explores the long afterlife of political violence

By Ann Levin, The Associated Press

Posted April 8, 2024 10:30 am.

Last Updated April 8, 2024 10:42 am.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Ann Levin, The Associated Press

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Author Interviews

Isabel allende tells a story of impossible love in 'lovers at the museum'.

Marcela Davison Aviles

Chilean author Isabel Allende poses for a photograph in Madrid on June 5, 2017. Francisco Seco/AP hide caption

Chilean author Isabel Allende poses for a photograph in Madrid on June 5, 2017.

Isabel Allende has a new short story out, a delightfully ribald tale of impossible love — with plenty of sex-at-first-sight.

The impossible part is because the lovers' adventure takes place in a locked fortress of a museum, Bilbao's famous Guggenheim; the lovers walk in after hours through massive doors that, well, just open for them. In the tradition of Calderón de la Barca, Voltaire's optimism of cultivation, and even Yip Harburg, Lovers at the Museum is a story of dreams, justice, and free will — and a powerful allegory of our human condition and the mystery of love.

We caught up with the 81-year-old Allende to ask her a few questions about her latest work. But first, a quick summary: Bibiña Aranda, a runaway bride, wakes up in the Guggenheim still wearing her wedding dress, draped in the arms of Indra Zubieta, a man she doesn't know. Caught by museum staff, and brought before the inspector of police Detective Larramendi — their improbable explanation of a transcendent night in the museum defies reality and his attempts to pin a rule of law, any rule, on an escapade that defines what dreams are made of.

Allende's creativity — extending to the work she pursues through her foundation, formed in memory of her daughter Paula — shows no signs of slowing down. This conversation, which took place by video conference, has been edited for length and clarity.

This story is optimistic and mischievous, a validation of optimism, really. Are you hoping your readers will find this as well?

Book Reviews

'the wind knows my name' is a reference and a refrain in the search for home.

You know, I never have an agenda. I'm not expecting the reader to get this or that out of whatever I write. I write because I love storytelling. And why do I write certain things at a certain moment? Usually because it is connected with something that is happening in my life at that point. I know what was happening when I wrote The Wind Knows My Name , that's for sure. I had a long interview about that book, and this person was talking about how the book is two tragic stories, the Holocaust and, and the horrible thing that happened in El Salvador. And it's not a tragic story. In spite of everything, it has optimism in it. For me, it's much more interesting to focus on the people who are helping, right? Not on the victim, because we all know about the victims. We have all heard about the Holocaust, but we seldom hear about that person who risked his life to save somebody. And that always touches me. So I focus on that. And maybe that's why my stories in general have a sort of redeeming quality.

In Lovers at the Museum you explore what's real and what's not, how to navigate an adventure in love vs. pragmatism. Like the inspector in this story, so pragmatic trying to figure out what he can pin on these lovers. It's a playful discourse of what it means to be investigating falling in love.

'A Long Petal Of The Sea' Finds Love In A Time Of Chaos

Every book is an invitation. Every book opens a conversation. When I write, I often think that I'm in the kitchen with a cup of tea, telling the story to someone, inviting them in.

And how do you see the world of storytelling we're discussing versus the new AI threats from the digital world?

I don't pay much attention because I'm not scared. I think that humanity has a need for stories since the beginning of language. The first thing that cave people did was play drums and tell each other stories. That need to hear stories will always be there. And now the media changes. Of course, before it was all oral and then we started reading books, and then we started doing audiobooks and digital books and ebooks and whatever. And now we have other media and the movies. I remember that when television came out, people said, movies are dead. No one is going to make movies anymore. And when movies came out, people said, nobody's going to read anymore, right? But whatever the media, storytelling is prevalent, it will always be there.

What's next for you?

I wrote a historical novel that will be published next year. And now I'm writing a memoir. And in the meantime, I wrote three books for really young kids. The parents read the book to the kids. I have a dog called Perla and she's a protagonist of the three little books. So I had a lot of fun doing that. But really, if I'm not writing I don't know what to do with my life. I feel that my head is full of stuff, it's always churning, you know?

Marcela Davison Avilés is a writer and independent producer living in Northern California.

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A Fictional Haven So Idyllic You Don’t Even Need Money. What Could Go Wrong?

In “A Better World,” a family hoping to escape their dangerous reality gets invited to an exclusive town only to discover that it’s not as peaceful as it seems.

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The book cover of “A Better World” features an image of a beautiful, lush suburban street at sunset, but the picture is turned upside down, conveying a sense that something is amiss.

By Karen Thompson Walker

Karen Thompson Walker is the author of three novels, “The Dreamers,” “The Age of Miracles” and the forthcoming “The Strange Case of Jane O.”

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A BETTER WORLD , by Sarah Langan

Early in Sarah Langan’s lively and satirical fifth novel, “A Better World,” a woman whose family has been handpicked to move to an idyllic small town begins to suspect that the place is too good to be true.

“It is too good to be true,” her husband agrees. “There’s always a catch.”

“But what is it?” she asks.

This is the question that propels the whole novel. It’s the same delicious, fable-like setup that has powered countless stories. Think of “The Stepford Wives” and more than a few episodes of “The Twilight Zone.”

The book is set several decades in the future, in an era plagued by environmental catastrophe, nuclear disaster and global conflict, among many other ills. But Plymouth Valley — an exclusive company town populated entirely by the most favored employees (and their families) of the BetterWorld corporation — is considered a refuge from all that ails the outside world. In Plymouth Valley, the toxic air is continuously scrubbed clean by a filter called (perhaps a bit too ominously) “the Bell Jar.” An on-site farm grows the kind of fresh produce that has disappeared from grocery stores elsewhere. And while the unemployment rate outside the town’s high walls is 25 percent, in Plymouth Valley, everyone lives in material comfort and without the use or need for money. “We think of PV as the last lifeboat,” one of the company’s top executives says.

For the members of the Farmer-Bowen family — Linda, Russell and their teenage twins, Hip and Josie — acceptance in Plymouth Valley through a job offer for Russell feels initially like an incredible piece of luck. But as Linda intuits from the start, something is amiss in their beautiful new town. The residents of Plymouth Valley turn out to be an insular bunch, bullying and excluding the Farmer-Bowens for mysterious reasons. And Linda and Russell soon begin to surmise that there’s a profoundly dark side to BetterWorld’s main product: a biodegradable polymer that has replaced plastic throughout the world and given the company a positive public relations glow.

Through a series of ominous encounters, the family gradually discovers what a deeply weird place Plymouth Valley is. The town members practice a set of traditions known collectively (again perhaps too obviously) as “Hollow,” which includes a series of secretive rituals that elevate selfishness and excess to the level of something like religion.

Part mystery, part social commentary, “A Better World” is cinematic and ambitious, though it might have benefited from a narrower focus. There are many targets of its satire: the enormous reach and power of corporations, the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry, the absurdity of tech speak and company culture, traditional gender roles, faux spirituality, greenwashing and nationalism, to name just a few.

The novel’s most resonant critique is voiced by a man who lives just outside the walls of Plymouth Valley, and whose child has suffered gravely at the hands of the supposedly do-gooder BetterWorld corporation: “All they care about is how fast the food gets delivered and if their house is clean. Look at our town. They stole all the water. They brought the dust. They don’t care so long as they have their nannies and plumbers and hookers.”

This is the superpower of the people of Plymouth Valley but also their undoing: their extraordinary ability to ignore the suffering of others, even when — or especially when — they themselves are responsible for that suffering. In a way, this is the catch that Linda has sensed from the beginning.

As with any good satire, the real subject of this novel is not the morally bankrupt town of Plymouth Valley but our own culture, and how the most privileged among us so often ignore the misery of those outside our own walls. “A Better World” is a dark and unsettling mirror.

A BETTER WORLD | By Sarah Langan | Atria Books | 356 pp. | $28.99

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Could This Political Marriage Be Saved? Biden and Obama Found a Way
THE LONG ALLIANCE: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, by Gabriel Debenedetti. In "The Long Alliance," Gabriel Debenedetti writes that Barack Obama and Joe Biden's nearly two ...
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The Long Alliance emphasizes that the pair's time in power together was not a buddy movie. Obama was the star. Biden played a supporting role until he too seized the brass ring, to send Donald ...
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The Long Alliance looks at the relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden from when they first met in Congress in 2003 until the book was written in 2022. I had not really given much thought into their relationship, and this was insightful book into they get along and worked together. I like how it focused on their relationship over their ...
THE LONG ALLIANCE
A readable portrait of a political partnership that may be seen as one of the most productive in U.S. history. Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-250-82997-9. Page Count: 432. Publisher: Henry Holt. Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022. Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022.
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From his perch on an island 500 miles north of the White House, Obama spoke with Biden sporadically. As always, their calls were private and no aides listened in. But as the summer wore on, Obama ...
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The Long Alliance delivers illuminating insights and intimate, riveting, sometimes unsparing details, and takes you inside the corridors of power and the struggle for America's future." ―Kim Ghattas, author of New York Times bestselling The Secretary and New York Times 2020 Notable Book Black Wave "Gabriel Debenedetti has written the ...
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5/5: The Long Alliance is a well-written book about the relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Democrats will love the book. Republicans will not; however, everyone can agree that relationships are complicated and the relationship between Obama and Biden certainly has its ups and downs. It is a great book that will keep the reader engaged, no matter their political party preference ...
The Long Alliance
The Long Alliance delivers illuminating insights and intimate, riveting, sometimes unsparing details, and takes you inside the corridors of power and the struggle for America's future." —Kim Ghattas, author of New York Times bestselling The Secretary and New York Times 2020 Notable Book Black Wave "Gabriel Debenedetti has written the ...
The Long Alliance
New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti reveals an inside look at the historically close, complicated, occasionally co-dependent, and at-times uncertain relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama.Delving far deeper than the simplistic "bromance" narrative that's long held the public eye, The Long Alliance reveals the past, present, and future of the unusual ...
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New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti provides an inside look at the complicated, co-dependent, and at-times rocky relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which has shaped Democratic politics over the past 16 years. Delving deeper than the bromance narrative that's held the public eye, The Long Alliance examines the past, present, and future of this historic ...
Long Alliance by Debenedetti, Gabriel
The Long Alliance delivers illuminating insights and intimate, riveting, sometimes unsparing details, and takes you inside the corridors of power and the struggle for America's future." ―Kim Ghattas, author of New York Times bestselling The Secretary and New York Times 2020 Notable Book Black Wave "Gabriel Debenedetti has written the ...
The Long Alliance: the imperfect union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama
- Kirkus Reviews 'Debenedetti has written an engaging and thorough book about the Obama-Biden bond - an underexplored but fascinating subject. By delving into the relationship between two presidents, and suggesting reasons for its success, The Long Alliance also offers insights into how political power may be managed and shared. It is a ...
The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama
The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama Gabriel Debenedetti. Holt, $29.99 (432p) ISBN 978-1-250-82997-9
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"The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama" by Gabriel Debenedetti. Holt. 432 pp. $29.99. Review provided by The Washington Post.
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View all reviews 'Gabriel Debenedetti's reporting on the Biden-Obama relationship is a tour-de-force, weaving together the political and personal dynamics that have bonded these two presidents and, at times, led to significant tension.
Buy The Long Alliance: the imperfect union of Joe Biden and Barack
― Kirkus Reviews 'Debenedetti has written an engaging and thorough book about the Obama-Biden bond - an underexplored but fascinating subject. By delving into the relationship between two presidents, and suggesting reasons for its success, The Long Alliance also offers insights into how political power may be managed and shared. It is a ...
The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama
The Long Alliance delivers illuminating insights and intimate, riveting, sometimes unsparing details, and takes you inside the corridors of power and the struggle for America's future." —Kim Ghattas, author of New York Times bestselling The Secretary and New York Times 2020 Notable Book Black Wave
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The second storyline unfolds in 2018 during the yellow vest protests in France, where Minnow, now a 38-year-old teacher, has fled after being engulfed in a scandal in the U.S. whipped up by the religious right for helping an underage girl at her school obtain an abortion. In Paris, she gets caught up with a group of activists who, like their counterparts a half century earlier, are willing to ...
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Read reviews from the world's largest community for readers. THIS IS NOT A BOOK BY DEBORAH BENJAMIN NOR IS IT AFFILIATED WITH HER. ... REVIEW OF THE LONG ALLIANCE: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama by Gabriel Debenedetti ... 0.00. 0 ratings 0 reviews. Want to read. Buy on Amazon. Rate this book. THIS IS NOT A BOOK BY DEBORAH ...
Book Review: Jen Silverman's gripping second novel explores the long
It was just another example of the long afterlife of the anti-war movement of the late 1960s, which Jen Silverman explores in a brilliant, beautifully written new novel, "There's Going to Be Trouble.". Titling it after a line from an Allen Ginsberg poem — "My mind is made up there's going to be trouble" — Silverman constructs an ...
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Isabel Allende has a new short story out, a delightfully ribald tale of impossible love — with plenty of sex-at-first-sight. The impossible part is because the lovers' adventure takes place in a ...
The Long Alliance
The introduction is read by the author. New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti reveals an inside look at the historically close, complicated, occasionally co-dependent, and at-times uncertain relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Delving far deeper than the simplistic "bromance" narrative that's long held the public eye, The Long Alliance reveals the past ...
Book Review: 'An Emancipation of the Mind,' by Matthew Stewart; 'The
Taken together, two new books tell the century-long story of the revolutionary ideals that transformed the United States, and the counterrevolutionaries who fought them. By S. C. Gwynne S.C ...
Book Review: 'A Better World,' by Sarah Langan
April 6, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET. A BETTER WORLD, by Sarah Langan. Early in Sarah Langan's lively and satirical fifth novel, "A Better World," a woman whose family has been handpicked to move to ...
Book Review: Jen Silverman's gripping second novel explores the long
Book Review: Jen Silverman's gripping second novel explores the long afterlife of political violence. In 1968, an apolitical grad student at Harvard gets drawn into the takeover of a campus ...

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