A Fighting Chance.

AuthorCurtin, Jennifer
PositionBook review

A FIGHTING CHANCE

Author: Elizabeth Warren

Published by: Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2014, 348pp, A$32.99.

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Watching Hilary Clinton's and Bernie Sanders's battle for the Democratic Party presidential nomination is a reminder that, for more than a moment, Senator Elizabeth Warren's name was also in the mix. In January 2015 the Atlantic Monthly quoted Warren as saying that she would not run, but then set about arguing for why she should. Over the course of 2015, the senator's supporters organised a campaign called 'Ready for Warren'. According to The Hill website, when Warren remained unmoved, the organisation's top officials went on to endorse Sanders. By Super Tuesday, 8 March 2016, Warren was still to reveal who she would support, although it was Clinton who narrowly won Warren's state of Massachusetts.

So what is it about Elizabeth Warren that makes her politics so appealing that speculation on her position continues to matter to the media? Her biopic A Fighting Chance provides us with some answers. Warren was born into a family of limited means, and had three elder brothers; she grew up assuming her family as 'middle class' although later came to learn that they were closer to being poor. Nevertheless, her parents were determined to provide their children with a better life, including a higher education. Warren acknowledges their role, but also recognises that her opportunities were structured by a state system of support for wage-earners, students and beneficiaries. Franklin Roosevelt's policy reforms had given all Americans a 'fighting chance', she argued, but over time the system's foundations shifted, making life more difficult for average citizens and more lucrative for the moneyed elites.

The book begins with a personal history that sketches Warren's pathway to politicisation, before tracking in more detail the five key battles she has taken on to change policy and people's lives. In a number of ways Warren's rise to political fame is unorthodox; she is known as the Harvard professor but her academic qualifications are from public universities; her track to tenure was preceded by a number of short-term teaching contracts in different cities, and she juggled these with motherhood in a time that was less welcoming of women in the profession. For her, the personal is political, not just in the feminist sense. Rather, her own experiences, and those of whom she documents in short vignettes, are stories of...

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