David Remnick on Book TV this weekend

NPR's Michele Norris will interview New Yorker editor David Remnick on C-SPAN2's Book TV this weekend about his new book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (Knopf). The 600+ page biography thoroughly examines every detail of Obama's life before his election as president, based on extensive research and interviews with scores of people who knew Obama during his formative years. The book only briefly touches on his time as president.

Remnick gives particular emphasis to his involvement in community organizing and the role it played in developing his approach to politics: listening to people from all sides of an issue and attempting to engage them in the solution. He presents Obama as a perpetual outsider who wins acceptance in whatever company he joins. "He changes styles without relinquishing his genuineness."

Researching and writing this exhaustive book while serving as editor of The New Yorker meant no weekends off and no vacations for more than a year for Remnick, but he's certainly not unfamiliar with hard work. He grew up in Hillsdale, New Jersey, and, after college, went to work for The Washington Post for ten years, the last four as its Moscow correspondent. He joined The New Yorker as a writer in 1992 and has been the magazine's editor since 1998. His last book was King of the World, a biography of Muhammad Ali. His book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

Check Book TV's website to confirm the time of the airing of this interview, which is scheduled for this coming Sunday (May 2). I've got this book sitting on my to-be-read stack, as I am a big fan of David Remnick's writing and a huge fan of President Obama and am eager to learn more about him.