Insiders get more access to push their ideas to powerful people. Outsiders could say what they want, he told her, but people on the inside don’t listen to them. I could be an insider, or I could be an outsider,” Warren writes. Eventually, Summers leaned back in his chair and gave Warren some advice. In April 2009, she writes, she received an invitation to dinner from Larry Summers, her former Harvard colleague who was one of the new president’s top economic advisers. He asked her to lead a congressional oversight panel that was set up as part of the bank bailouts, a springboard that helped Warren emerge as a key figure in Washington debates and champion her cause of creating a new agency to protect consumers from predatory lending practices.

In the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, after preparing peach cobbler and iced tea, she got a call out of the blue from Harry Reid. Kennedy (Warren still has a voice mail from Kennedy on her phone, which she listened to during her 2012 campaign). She spends several pages describing the family connections that have led her to assert a partial Native American heritage, for which she was criticized by Republicans in her 2012 Senate campaign.īut most of the book is about her travails in Washington, including early work on bankruptcy issues with the late Senator Edward M. She writes about growing up in a struggling middle-class family, her drive to shape her career, and how it contributed to the collapse of her first marriage. The book spans the compelling biographical arc that is familiar to many Massachusetts voters but may be new to her national following - her Oklahoma upbringing, her law degree and populist advocacy, teaching at Harvard Law, her Washington battles, and finally her 2012 Senate race. Neither the publisher nor Warren’s office would reveal the size of her advance, although some industry sources have estimated it likely topped $1 million. The original working title was “Rigged,” to describe how she believes the Wall Street economy is stacked against average Americans, but was changed to the more optimistic “A Fighting Chance.” The book is being published by Metropolitan Books, a division of Henry Holt and Co.

Warren is planning a six-week book tour that, in addition to Cambridge, Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, will take her to New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland, Ore. Throughout the book, Warren also interweaves personal details, writing how she engaged in national policy debates by day while having nightly conversations with her pregnant daughter, or of running a high-profile Senate campaign while dealing with the emotional toll of her ailing dog, Otis.

A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren