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mybestfriendisabook's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
5.0
i genuinely enjoyed every chapter!
it was very interesting to learn about the behind of scenes of such a high level role - i’m a sucker for this stuff. the writing was understandable and consistent, making it extremely easy to read despite the intimidating length. loved the photo inserts. i noticed that it focused more on the happening of events (there’s so much to do!) rather than a reflection of her experiences but switched more to the latter towards the end - FYI if you’re looking for something particular.
from the book jacket, i could see that her and Anthony didn’t work out but didn’t expect that it would be that deep. very sad. :(
this makes me admire the author and HRC for the tireless work they do. it made me realize how easy it is to believe and judge someone from what the media puts out but there is so much more behind it - real human beings. really interesting to get the inside scoop behind the big events - 9/11, the emails, 2016 election
i didn't plan to read this anytime soon but it just felt right when i was browsing my library and i’m glad i picked it up! it’s my first 500+ read in a long time.
it was very interesting to learn about the behind of scenes of such a high level role - i’m a sucker for this stuff. the writing was understandable and consistent, making it extremely easy to read despite the intimidating length. loved the photo inserts. i noticed that it focused more on the happening of events (there’s so much to do!) rather than a reflection of her experiences but switched more to the latter towards the end - FYI if you’re looking for something particular.
from the book jacket, i could see that her and Anthony didn’t work out but didn’t expect that it would be that deep. very sad. :(
this makes me admire the author and HRC for the tireless work they do. it made me realize how easy it is to believe and judge someone from what the media puts out but there is so much more behind it - real human beings. really interesting to get the inside scoop behind the big events - 9/11, the emails, 2016 election
i didn't plan to read this anytime soon but it just felt right when i was browsing my library and i’m glad i picked it up! it’s my first 500+ read in a long time.
soph2962's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.25
sde's review against another edition
3.5
I no longer often read political biographies, but I know a couple of people who really liked this one. I saw the author speak about the book at an event at a local university, and she was very engaging. All the books were sold out at the event before I got to the front of the line, so I decided to listen to it.
Although long, it is more engaging than most. I know a woman who grew up in Saudi Arabia, and she said she felt the book really whitewashed life there, and I kind of had the sense that a lot of the book was that way, but I still learned a lot of interesting facts.
Her discussion of the drama and later break up around her husband, Anthony Wiener's, publicly horrible behavior seemed even-handed. She does not disguise how difficult it was for her and how much stress and anger he gave her, but she does not use the book as an opportunity to eviscerate him. I did have more sympathy for him after this book, at least in relation to being a good father to his son.
I am not sure how I feel about Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, but this is one among many accounts from someone who worked with her who talk about how supportive she is to her staff and mentees. There may be a "tell all" book or article somewhere that says otherwise, but I have not come upon it.
The author does a decent job narrating the book. I am not sure how she was able to read parts of the books without breaking down.
Although long, it is more engaging than most. I know a woman who grew up in Saudi Arabia, and she said she felt the book really whitewashed life there, and I kind of had the sense that a lot of the book was that way, but I still learned a lot of interesting facts.
Her discussion of the drama and later break up around her husband, Anthony Wiener's, publicly horrible behavior seemed even-handed. She does not disguise how difficult it was for her and how much stress and anger he gave her, but she does not use the book as an opportunity to eviscerate him. I did have more sympathy for him after this book, at least in relation to being a good father to his son.
I am not sure how I feel about Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, but this is one among many accounts from someone who worked with her who talk about how supportive she is to her staff and mentees. There may be a "tell all" book or article somewhere that says otherwise, but I have not come upon it.
The author does a decent job narrating the book. I am not sure how she was able to read parts of the books without breaking down.
ml_schoon's review against another edition
5.0
Such a great book!! I found it to be written very thoughtfully. She recognizes her privileges but also doesn’t sugarcoat the times of her life that were not great. I love a book about a strong woman and this is one I will recommend to others. I highly recommend the audio version read by the author.
livesinmyth's review against another edition
5.0
first audiobook of 2023 and wow what a way to start the year! amazing, inspiring, uplifting, interesting, and such wonderful narration ❤️
kararoge's review against another edition
4.0
Highly recommend the audiobook that is narrated by the author.
deeclancy's review against another edition
4.0
Initially, I found this book difficult to put down, then later on, could only read it in fits and starts. The latter experience was more to do with the subject matter than the writing style. Huma Abedin is a really engaging writer, particularly when the narrative is about her own family of origin. She writes with a great tenderness about her father, who died when she was still a teenager. (He is a man whose writings I would like to explore.) The description of her father's death in the book is incredibly moving and heartbreaking.
Abedin grew up between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with Muslim parents, of Indian and Pakistani descent. She has a family history of engaging with different worlds, including that of empire. An uncle was aide-de-camp to the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten (who was assasinated by the IRA in 1979, along with two teenagers, in a bomb attack in Sligo during the Troubles). The fact that Abedin ended up working at the heart of another empire is possibly not so surprising.
Abedin knows instinctively that public service often involves having to carry contradictions on one's shoulders and is willing to live with this. As someone who has noticed through my own experiences that activists at grassroots level can sometimes get too comfortable with the moral highground if we forget to interrogate ourselves and one another regularly, I do not intend to judge this. In fact, there are many ways in which I can really admire it, in a world that is often deeply unkind to women who take a stand. Abedin's life became public by default after a time, even if that wasn't part of her actual job description. There were a number of factors influencing this, including her marriage to a politican and her willingness to appear in a Vogue spread early in her career - I could understand this on one level, as Abedin is stunningly beautiful, but I did wonder while reading the narrative about this whether it was a normal activity for political aides.
It does surprise me that there is so little written about Iraq in the book, and what is said is rather one-sided. The total disregard for the U.N. that was displayed by the U.S. and U.K. administrations at the time doesn't make it into Abedin's apologia for Hillary Clinton's vote in favour of the invasion. The lack of any evidence of WMDs doesn't get covered, nor does the fact that the invasion unleased and motivated a new, more dangerous wave of terrorist brutality and humanitarian crises in the region that has lasted to this day. The book goes right up to 2017. You'd think the Iraq quagmire would be questioned a little more. Then again, I am sure this book had to be heavily vetted and redacted by relevant authorities before it was published, given the nature of Abedin's work.
The above would seem to those who know me a bit of a predictable concern on my part about the book. But it also cuts to the heart of one of my main critiques: it did, at times, feel a bit like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Democratic Party, that is, the old guard of the party, as opposed to the new wave who were elected after Trump became President. In her haze of admiration for the Clintons, Abedin misses, in my opinion, various of the reasons the election was lost to Trump, including the fact that the old guard of Democrats were and remain widely seen as too deeply ingrained and elitist. Perceptions are important in politics, whether they represent the reality or not. Some of this is because Abedin's admiration for Hillary Clinton (or HRC, as she refers to her throughout the book) is fairly infinite, and there seem to be some good reasons for this.
HRC, it appears, is a complete powerhouse, who is extremely loyal to her staff and has treated Abedin with great compassion during highly challenging times Abedin suffered personally. Another fact worth noting here is that the late Republican senator John McCain also supported Abedin when unfair accusations were made against her to try to damage HRC. It's no harm reminding ourselves that there used to be some decent, reasonable individuals in the Republican Party, even though in the wacky grotesqueness of recent years (specifically 2017-2021), this has been difficult to remember. (McCain's choice of his own running mate in 2008 is something that will always remain difficult to credit, however.)
The parts of the book about Abedin's marriage to Anthony Weiner are difficult and painful to read. I imagine they would be such for any woman who has ever been in a relationship that seemed promising at the start, but that later began to have confusingly abusive overtones (that is a pain that is hard to get over, even when you narrowly avoid marrying the person). Those of us who have been there can testify to the fact that these situations can creep up on anybody, like the cliched metaphor of the frog in lukewarm water that is on a low heat, then a while later is surprised and scared to find himself in boiling water. The drip-feed of problematic actions on the part of a partner can be highly incremental, to the point where you write instances of problematic behaviour off as one-off blips, and you remain loyal and loving until it is suddenly no longer tenable to be such. The common, and deeply facile, reaction of 'Why doesn't she leave?' is, therefore, easy for others to ask, but not so easy for a woman to enact when the relationship is established. For those who would judge, I can testify that all it takes to find oneself in a bad relationship scenario is to be a well-meaning person, brought up by decent parents, who teach you by loving example that loyalty matters. Nevertheless, Abedin did divorce Weiner, eventually, and one can only wish her every happiness and fulfillment in her post-Weiner life.
To have these patterns of abuse played out on the world stage at incredibly inopportune times, as if calculated to humiliate and derail Abedin's life and career, is a form of torture that only the strongest of women could endure, and come out the other end with her values and sense of self intact. I am in awe of the strength of character Abedin shows in this respect. She really was in a position of checkmate at times, not only dealing with a publicly, and criminally, deviant former congressman husband, but also being a mother, a senior member of HRC's staff, the main and at times only breadwinner for her family after her then-husband's initial fall from grace, and later, a Muslim facing all kinds of false accusations about her associations in an at-times hostile political climate. It is fortuitous, I guess, that her boss is a woman who has also faced more than her own fair share of public pressures, some of these related to her husband (President Clinton). One can only assume that this is part of the reason for the solidarity and mutual loyalty.
There are many other strands to this book that will be of interest to many readers. Political memoir is not normally my cup of tea, partially because it is often an apologia for a person's decisions while in office. Abedin is not a politician per se, but it wouldn't surprise me, honestly, if she became one some day. That could, in fact, be a very good thing, given the life she has led to date and the grace with which she has handled the often incredibly burdensome personal realities she has had to face, through no fault of her own.
Abedin grew up between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with Muslim parents, of Indian and Pakistani descent. She has a family history of engaging with different worlds, including that of empire. An uncle was aide-de-camp to the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten (who was assasinated by the IRA in 1979, along with two teenagers, in a bomb attack in Sligo during the Troubles). The fact that Abedin ended up working at the heart of another empire is possibly not so surprising.
Abedin knows instinctively that public service often involves having to carry contradictions on one's shoulders and is willing to live with this. As someone who has noticed through my own experiences that activists at grassroots level can sometimes get too comfortable with the moral highground if we forget to interrogate ourselves and one another regularly, I do not intend to judge this. In fact, there are many ways in which I can really admire it, in a world that is often deeply unkind to women who take a stand. Abedin's life became public by default after a time, even if that wasn't part of her actual job description. There were a number of factors influencing this, including her marriage to a politican and her willingness to appear in a Vogue spread early in her career - I could understand this on one level, as Abedin is stunningly beautiful, but I did wonder while reading the narrative about this whether it was a normal activity for political aides.
It does surprise me that there is so little written about Iraq in the book, and what is said is rather one-sided. The total disregard for the U.N. that was displayed by the U.S. and U.K. administrations at the time doesn't make it into Abedin's apologia for Hillary Clinton's vote in favour of the invasion. The lack of any evidence of WMDs doesn't get covered, nor does the fact that the invasion unleased and motivated a new, more dangerous wave of terrorist brutality and humanitarian crises in the region that has lasted to this day. The book goes right up to 2017. You'd think the Iraq quagmire would be questioned a little more. Then again, I am sure this book had to be heavily vetted and redacted by relevant authorities before it was published, given the nature of Abedin's work.
The above would seem to those who know me a bit of a predictable concern on my part about the book. But it also cuts to the heart of one of my main critiques: it did, at times, feel a bit like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Democratic Party, that is, the old guard of the party, as opposed to the new wave who were elected after Trump became President. In her haze of admiration for the Clintons, Abedin misses, in my opinion, various of the reasons the election was lost to Trump, including the fact that the old guard of Democrats were and remain widely seen as too deeply ingrained and elitist. Perceptions are important in politics, whether they represent the reality or not. Some of this is because Abedin's admiration for Hillary Clinton (or HRC, as she refers to her throughout the book) is fairly infinite, and there seem to be some good reasons for this.
HRC, it appears, is a complete powerhouse, who is extremely loyal to her staff and has treated Abedin with great compassion during highly challenging times Abedin suffered personally. Another fact worth noting here is that the late Republican senator John McCain also supported Abedin when unfair accusations were made against her to try to damage HRC. It's no harm reminding ourselves that there used to be some decent, reasonable individuals in the Republican Party, even though in the wacky grotesqueness of recent years (specifically 2017-2021), this has been difficult to remember. (McCain's choice of his own running mate in 2008 is something that will always remain difficult to credit, however.)
The parts of the book about Abedin's marriage to Anthony Weiner are difficult and painful to read. I imagine they would be such for any woman who has ever been in a relationship that seemed promising at the start, but that later began to have confusingly abusive overtones (that is a pain that is hard to get over, even when you narrowly avoid marrying the person). Those of us who have been there can testify to the fact that these situations can creep up on anybody, like the cliched metaphor of the frog in lukewarm water that is on a low heat, then a while later is surprised and scared to find himself in boiling water. The drip-feed of problematic actions on the part of a partner can be highly incremental, to the point where you write instances of problematic behaviour off as one-off blips, and you remain loyal and loving until it is suddenly no longer tenable to be such. The common, and deeply facile, reaction of 'Why doesn't she leave?' is, therefore, easy for others to ask, but not so easy for a woman to enact when the relationship is established. For those who would judge, I can testify that all it takes to find oneself in a bad relationship scenario is to be a well-meaning person, brought up by decent parents, who teach you by loving example that loyalty matters. Nevertheless, Abedin did divorce Weiner, eventually, and one can only wish her every happiness and fulfillment in her post-Weiner life.
To have these patterns of abuse played out on the world stage at incredibly inopportune times, as if calculated to humiliate and derail Abedin's life and career, is a form of torture that only the strongest of women could endure, and come out the other end with her values and sense of self intact. I am in awe of the strength of character Abedin shows in this respect. She really was in a position of checkmate at times, not only dealing with a publicly, and criminally, deviant former congressman husband, but also being a mother, a senior member of HRC's staff, the main and at times only breadwinner for her family after her then-husband's initial fall from grace, and later, a Muslim facing all kinds of false accusations about her associations in an at-times hostile political climate. It is fortuitous, I guess, that her boss is a woman who has also faced more than her own fair share of public pressures, some of these related to her husband (President Clinton). One can only assume that this is part of the reason for the solidarity and mutual loyalty.
There are many other strands to this book that will be of interest to many readers. Political memoir is not normally my cup of tea, partially because it is often an apologia for a person's decisions while in office. Abedin is not a politician per se, but it wouldn't surprise me, honestly, if she became one some day. That could, in fact, be a very good thing, given the life she has led to date and the grace with which she has handled the often incredibly burdensome personal realities she has had to face, through no fault of her own.