She’s the Boss isn’t the kind of book you’ll curl up with on a drizzly day and savor.
Don’t get me wrong: this bio/expose of Speaker Nancy Pelosi is well researched, thorough, clearly written and ultimately damning. It contains all kinds of useful statistical and factual tidbits you’ll want to store away for future reference.
It’s also very depressing.
Page after page details Pelosi’s rise to power, and the corruption and cynicism that fuelled that rise practically oozes between the book’s covers.
Frankly, it was hard to read these horror stories at length.
Unlike so many authors before her, Rochelle Schwiezer doesn’t romanticize the “Tamany Hall” style atmosphere of Pelosi’s childhood. (Her father was a long time mayor of Baltimore, very much the old school Democrat “boss”.) We’re accustomed to getting these stories of graft and even violence served up as quaint, amusing entertainments, but not here.
So while I can recommend She’s the Boss as the obvious product of hard work and sharp thinking, the resulting book wasn’t what I’d call entertaining. Given the subject matter, I don’t think any other outcome was possible. Nancy Pelosi is a repulsive character and her story is less than edifying.
I look forward to reading Schwiezer’s next book, whatever it may be. Few subjects could possibly be as revolting as this one, and the author deserves considerable credit for dragging herself through the muck to produce She’s the Boss for posterity.
From an interview with Rochelle Schwiezer at AIM:
The book is highly unfavorable—I guess you would say it’s highly unfavorable. It points out, I think, that this was a woman who calculated her way to the top. She didn’t just fall into things the way that she would like us to believe—and, also, her agenda, what her agenda is about, is money, power, and control. I find it interesting that it would be ignored by them. If you look at her “Unfavorable” rating overall—yesterday, a poll came out showing that her “Unfavorable” ratings were as high as BP’s. They’re higher than former Speaker Gingrich’s ever were. So I’m surprised that they wouldn’t at least take a look at it, and maybe try to help understand why her ratings are so high in the unfavorability area.
