Book #2/2019 Becoming

Becoming by Michelle Obama
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

How can I do justice in a review of this remarkable book? This huge tapestry spread over 430 large pages of small print. The story of this iconic American woman, her story, beautifully composed - full of love, hope, endeavour and achievement. An intimate, powerful and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of The United States.

From the South Side of Chicago, where she and her brother Craig shared a bedroom; where her parents Fraser and Marian Robinson raised her to be outspoken and unafraid and from whom she learned the importance of education. Michelle graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and started her career as an attorney at the Chicago law firm Sidley and Austin, where she met her future husband, Barack Obama. She recounts the struggle to balance her work and family with her husband's fast-moving political career, nurturing her daughters Malia and Sasha, gives a behind-the-scenes account of her family's history-making launch into the global limelight and life inside the White House, with some wonderful anecdotes about meeting our Queen Elizabeth. This alone endeared me to her.

Michelle Obama tells her story with honesty and boldness and has my unbounded admiration. I recommend Becoming without reservation.

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Book #42 The President is Missing

The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A rollercoaster ride over a long weekend when the very existence of everything American faces a cyber-threat of such magnitude it will return the country to the ‘dark ages’. This key word is known only to POTUS and his six closest aides: the NSA head, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, the CIA director, the secretary of homeland security and the Vice President - and yet… someone has leaked this trigger to the enemy.

President Jonathan Duncan is facing a select committee hearing. The Speaker of the house seems determined to have him impeached for allegedly having a ‘phone conversation with the world’s most wanted terrorist - Suliman Cindoruk. POTUS invokes executive privilege. Why? For reasons only known to himself the president leaves the White House, his covert departure known only to his oldest friend and White House counsel, Danny Akers. The president is missing. Speculation as to why leads to a media frenzy. No-one knows where he is or what his intention is. But what faces the USA is certain destruction of everything dependent on the internet - and in this day and age that means - everything. And this book is truly unputdownable…

I have read some ridiculous comments about this book. Why? Because Bill Clinton is a co-author? Really? What happens when two highly intelligent individuals cooperate on a political thriller (and I say that without prejudice) results in a story so riveting, so breathtaking, so pulse-racing, that took me behind the machinations of US politics into a world of subterfuge and nail-biting tension.

I recommend The President is Missing without reservation.

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