The Education of an Idealist - Samantha Power

The Education of an Idealist

By Samantha Power

  • Release Date: 2019-09-10
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 150 Ratings

Description

A NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER

An intimate, powerful, and galvanizing memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner, human rights advocate, and former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. Named one of the best books of the year:

The New York Times • National Public Radio • Time • The Economist • The Washington Post • Vanity Fair • Christian Science Monitor • Publishers Weekly • Audible

“Her highly personal and reflective memoir . . . is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world.”—President Barack Obama

Includes an updated afterword

Tracing her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official, Samantha Power’s acclaimed memoir is a unique blend of suspenseful storytelling, vivid character portraits, and shrewd political insight. After her critiques of US foreign policy caught the eye of Senator Barack Obama, he invited her to work with him on Capitol Hill and then on his presidential campaign. When Obama won the presidency, Power went from being an activist outsider to serving as his human rights adviser and, in 2013, becoming the youngest-ever US Ambassador to the United Nations. Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy, offering a compelling and deeply honest look at navigating the halls of power while trying to put one’s ideals into practice. Along the way, she lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life, shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with raising two young children, and makes the case for how we each can advance the cause of human dignity. This is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism—and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference.

“This is a wonderful book. […] The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly and with unblinking honesty.”—THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times Book Review 

“Truly engrossing…A pleasure to read.”—RACHEL MADDOW

“A beautiful memoir about the times we’re living in and the questions we must ask ourselves…I honestly couldn’t put it down.” —CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild

“Power’s compelling memoir provides critically important insights we should all understand as we face some of the most vexing issues of our time.” —BRYAN STEVENSON, author of Just Mercy

Reviews

  • Her Inspiring Life Continues

    5
    By Bob Magnant
    While searching for something interesting to read, I stumbled across Samantha Power’s “The Education of an Idealist” and I was simply overwhelmed by it! I had no idea how rich a tale that she had shaped for us. Where the path to the United Nations emerged from for this nine-year-old immigrant is hard to imagine. Her powerful character and the unique understanding of people, driven by her mother, shaped each step of her journey; her story to date is most wonderful and quite colorful as well. Sam emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1979 with her mother, a dedicated doctor, and by the time she entered high school in Atlanta, GA, her Dublin accent had disappeared and her proficiencies in squash, tennis, baseball and basketball made her more American than most. She saw her unexpected acceptance to Yale as a dream destination and first began to pursue sports journalism but Tiananmen Square and the Berlin Wall, refocused her on history in her second year of Yale with a vengeance. Power got her first exposure to a crumbling Yugoslavia and to the newly democratic Eastern Europe, traveling there during the summer of 1990. Consequently focusing on her grades that fall and on foreign policy, she qualified for a Carnegie internship upon her graduation in 1992. She moved to Washington and gained focus on what she wanted her future to be through reports on the human rights and changing events in Bosnia. The Serb Army was conducting the most brutal conflict since World War II there to create their own ethnically pure republic, with camps where they starved and beat minorities to dispose of them. Needless to say, she was not the first person to believe that one person could make a difference. Her her efforts to cover the wars in Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1995 as a war correspondent were both unbelievable and dangerous. They made her recognize that world’s policymakers were reluctant to condemn mass atrocities or take on any responsibility for intervening in them and that better policy approaches were needed. She chose to pursue a law degree at Harvard and to continue to tell her story. From 1998 to 2002, she was the Founding Executive Director at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and her book “A Problem from Hell”: America in the Age of Genocide was published in 2002; it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2003. At age 39, Power served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council from 2009 to 2013. She served as President Obama’s United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. She continues living a full life with her family in Concord, MA and serves on the faculty at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School. As Power’s says, “People who care, act, and refuse to give up may not change the world, but they can change many individual worlds.” Bob Magnant is the author of ‘INCREDIBLE Storytelling' on iTunes, 'Domestic Satellite: An FCC Giant Step' and 'The Last Transition...', a fact-based novel about Iran. I write about the political process, globalization, the Internet and US policy. As a retired Federal IT Engineer, I share my experiences to promote a greater understanding for traditional writing that earlier generations still need for communicating with five Apple Books called the Fingertips series.

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