Barack Obama's life and political evolution will be detailed in a new biography of the president called "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama" by New Yorker editor David Remnick, publisher Knopf announced today.
The book relies on hundreds of interviews with Obama himself as well as his friends, family, professors, mentors, and rivals, and includes the president's letters as well as letters written by his mother, all never before published.
In addition to following Obama's life story and his political journey, "The Bridge" examines "the complex saga of race in America that led to his historic election," Knopf said. The book focuses on the president's complicated racial identity, and Remnick uses controversial figures like Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, and Bill Ayers as his sources as well as the more traditionally accepted members of Obama's team.
David Remnick is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the fall of the Soviet Union, "Lenin's Tomb," as well as the bestselling "King of the World." "The Bridge" will be available on April 6, according to Knopf.
In an amusing slip, The New York Times misquoted Remnick in their coverage of the new biography, calling "The Bridge" a "pimped out" version of an earlier article Remnick had written, when in fact he had called it a "pumped up" version.