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A review by marisbest2
Pelosi by Molly Ball
3.0
Nancy Pelosi is a remarkable politician and listening to this book made me even more aware of that. It captures her triumphs (and losses) in rich detail. It places her in the current historical context. It does a great job showing how she's the only woman in the room and why that matters.
But this book fails in two respects. First, despite the author's afterwords, this is straight hagiography. Nancy here is a master, who rarely loses, and when she does its pretty much ignored. Theres no analysis of her voting, no analysis of her deeper values, and critique is hard to find. Nancy is a hero in this book, without equal.
Second, the author claims that Pelosi has no inner life, and it shows. She spends one tiny intro chapter on her life before running for office. She doesn't really talk about her relationships, what she learned over time (other than count votes). There's nothing here about her life outside the leadership, nothing about the people she's inspired by. There's barely anything about her constituents. This book ends up being just at the political level, and so it makes for a good political biography but can hardly be considered complete.
Pelosi deserves a really full biography. Maybe that can't happen until she retires, but one thing is for sure, this isnt it.
But this book fails in two respects. First, despite the author's afterwords, this is straight hagiography. Nancy here is a master, who rarely loses, and when she does its pretty much ignored. Theres no analysis of her voting, no analysis of her deeper values, and critique is hard to find. Nancy is a hero in this book, without equal.
Second, the author claims that Pelosi has no inner life, and it shows. She spends one tiny intro chapter on her life before running for office. She doesn't really talk about her relationships, what she learned over time (other than count votes). There's nothing here about her life outside the leadership, nothing about the people she's inspired by. There's barely anything about her constituents. This book ends up being just at the political level, and so it makes for a good political biography but can hardly be considered complete.
Pelosi deserves a really full biography. Maybe that can't happen until she retires, but one thing is for sure, this isnt it.