A Fighting Chance

Starred review from April 21, 2014
Warren, the freshman senator from Massachusetts turned Democratic rock star, serves up a frank and lively account of how she became the banking and finance industry's fiercest nemesis. Warren's passion is rooted in her personal history. As a young girl in her native Oklahoma, she saw her family's fortunes nose dive after her father's heart attack, losing their car and almost their house and forcing her mother back into the job market at age 50. Warren puts herself through college, marries, grows weary of stay-at-home motherhood, and fatefully decides to enroll in law school, inspired by "television lawyers who were always fighting to defend good people who needed help." She develops an expertise in bankruptcy, becoming one of the country's go-to experts. In these pages, she displays a down-home charm and an effortless rapport with everyday people that makes her story more engaging than the average political tome. Her sketches of the powerful, among them President Barack Obama, the late Ted Kennedy, Timothy Geithner, provide a feel for the ups and downs of inside the Beltway relationships. Yet the pivotal, often vicious campaign battle with former Bay State senator Scott Brown that catapulted her into the U.S. Senate is an almost anti-climactic footnote to her fight to set up her baby, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The book is more memoir than manifesto; Warren emerges as a committed advocate with real world sensibility, who tasted tough economic times at an early age and did not forget its bitterness.

April 15, 2014
In this engaging memoir, Massachusetts Sen. Warren (co-author: All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, 2005, etc.) introduces her family and recounts the battles that shaped her career as a teacher and politician. Educated as a specialist in contract law, the author reshaped her career to become one of the country's leading experts in bankruptcy after the law was amended in 1981. Seeking to understand why people were going bankrupt in increasing numbers, Warren began to accumulate evidence contradicting the orthodox view that people seeking protection from creditors via the bankruptcy courts were deadbeats "who existed at the economic margins and would always be there." She began to understand that bankruptcy was affecting ordinary middle-class people who found themselves unable to face the financial consequences of job loss, sickness or other personal catastrophes. These elements resonated within her own family: Her father lost his job and suffered repeated sicknesses, and her grandchildren have ongoing health issues. Warren pushed further to identify how credit-issuing institutions were taking advantage of consumers in manipulative ways. The expertise she developed led to a request for her to join the staff of a presidential commission on bankruptcy in 1995. The author uses her legal background, political knowledge gained from a succession of appointments involving bankruptcy law, an investigation into the financial crisis of 2008, and her proposal for a Consumer Finance Agency to provide intriguingly detailed information about the politics of bankruptcy, banking and credit. She introduces leading figures with whom her career has intersected, including Sen. Edward Kennedy and Congressman Barney Frank, and she shows how her continuing concerns with the financial plight of the middle class shaped her approach to the battles she felt called to fight. The book also covers her Massachusetts senatorial campaign. A frankly partisan memoir that provides shrewd insights into both national politics and the state of the middle class.

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May 15, 2014

In the world of ordinary citizens vs. big banks, U.S. senator Warren (Massachusetts; coauthor, The Two-Income Trap) sees the match as the battle between David and Goliath. She warns readers that often the story doesn't have a happy ending and that sometimes it ends with David getting the slingshot shoved down his throat--sideways. The senator believes that people should understand that the consumer financial market favors big banks because regulatory and legislative bodies are targeted by well-financed lobbying groups paid for and directed by those financial giants. She relates her experiences during the 20-plus years she served on several congressionally appointed commissions and oversight boards related to consumer bankruptcy and TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and as a special advisor advocating for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren shows how the system gave banks the edge over the middle-class borrower, and she explains how she worked tirelessly in all of her congressional-advisor roles to give middle-class families a fighting chance against the power of the finance industry. VERDICT Lay readers and business students who need to understand how banking and lending regulation and legislation are enacted will appreciate the personal stories Warren uses to demonstrate the problems borrowers encounter, the solutions she worked for, and the disappointments she met along the way.--Jill Ortner, SUNY Buffalo Libs.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2014
Warren gained national notoriety during her tenure on the commission to study the financial crisis, leading to creation of the consumer finance agency she headed briefly. In this engaging memoir, she recalls her journey from a childhood of struggle in Oklahoma City to success in academia and politics and laments the lack of chances for others to work hard and achieve their own versions of success. Warren recalls an early marriage, struggling to raise young children as she moved from a career as a teacher to law school to teaching law. She was so agitated by the unfairness of bankruptcy law that she wrote books about it and used her professorship at Harvard as a platform, eventually launching herself into a career in Washington. Armed with stories and statistics about how bankruptcy and predatory banking practices affected middle-class families, Warren lobbied hard for change. She offers a behind-the-scenes look at the political deal-making and head-butting machinations in efforts to restore the nation's financial system after the mortgage debacle. Warren recalls negotiations with political figures from Senator Ted Kennedy to President Obama as well as her hard-fought campaign to unseat Scott Brown as U.S. senator from Massachusetts. This is a passionate memoir of one woman's personal story and the larger story of corruption in financial circles and the need for reform that balances the interests of the American middle class against those of the corporate sector. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The senior senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard law professor here gives the backstory on her fight for the middle class in a memoir that is sure to attract interest beyond the book-review section.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 28, 2014
Warren, a rising star in progressive political circles who parlayed her decades of work as a legal scholar with a focus on consumer rights into a successful run for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, offers a fiery stump-speech style of delivery, in keeping with her populist persona. Even though she downplays her celebrity status and confesses to having serious stage fright during her initial national media appearances, Warren possesses a graceful ease in the recording booth. Her narration conveys the poise of an accomplished attorney and Harvard professor and the humble frankness of her working-class roots. Warren’s colloquialisms—e.g., “hurrican’ ”—seem to flow naturally, without any hint of affectation. She doesn’t shy away from a tone of righteous anger, particularly when it comes to lobbying by the banking industry. Nor is Warren afraid raise her voice as she names the leaders with whom she has butted heads. But she also makes a point to temper that emotion with touches of humility and humor. A Metropolitan hardcover.