A Fighting Chance

by Elizabeth Warren Narrated by Elizabeth Warren

Overview

In A Fighting Chance, an unlikely political star tells the inspiring story of the two-decade journey that taught her how Washington really works-and really doesn't

As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacher-an ambitious goal, given her family's modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that changed her life: could she come to Washington DC to help advise Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws?

Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost. She tried to hold the federal government accountable during the financial crisis but became a target of the big banks. She came up with the idea for a new agency designed to protect consumers from predatory bankers and was denied the opportunity to run it. Finally, at age 62, she decided to run for elective office and won the most competitive-and watched-Senate race in the country.

In this passionate, funny, rabble-rousing audiobook, Warren shows why she has chosen to fight tooth and nail for the middle class-and why she has become a hero to all those who believe that America's government can and must do better for working families.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A potent mix of memoir and policy...The title of this book reminds us that this is about Warren's fight. She is still the fiery advocate who called for a bureau to protect consumers or, as a second choice, 'no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.'" —The New York Times Book Review

"Moving...Ultimately, the book's message is that one person can make a difference....After reading this book, it is comforting to know that Elizabeth Warren, with her passion, anger and bluntness, will not be silenced." —The Washington Post

“[Warren's] storytelling is well-paced and engaging....She mixes policy points with rich behind-the-scenes anecdotes.” —The Boston Globe

“Intelligent and informative...[Warren is] good, plainspoken company who makes you feel smarter for having spent such easy time with her....Her new book, which is a loving look at her family as well as her country, will only broaden her base.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A revealing account of Warren's rise to prominence...[Warren's] arguments demand to be taken seriously....As a politician and activist, Warren's great strength is that she retains the outsider's perspective, and the outsider's sense of moral outrage, which runs throughout A Fighting Chance....She's an indomitable battler for the underdog, and she doesn't take no for an answer.” —The New York Review of Books

“The Wall Street watchdog and U.S. senator has produced a readable and sometimes infuriating explanation of the biggest financial crisis of our time.” —People

“[Warren] has a compelling story to tell....She is also entertaining about professional politics.” —The Economist

“Warren's prose is as...direct as her book's title. She has a good story to tell and she tells it well....Warren's accomplishments defied expectations virtually every step of the way.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Passionate...Her vision [for the country], laid out elegantly and effectively in A Fighting Chance, involves investments by 'we the people,' through our government, in schools, roads and research labs, and in a social safety net for 'the least among us,' investments that are, at once, in our own self-interest and in the national interest.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Remarkable...A Fighting Chance takes the reader into the nitty-gritty of our nation's most controversial financial decisions with a depth of insight and experience no one else in today's politics can offer....In a time when our country's greatness seems to be in crisis, this is the story of a woman who is the living embodiment of the American Dream.” —Harvard Political Review

“Revealing...Warren's book describes the troubling patterns and practices of high-level Washington.” —Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times

“Warren has written a good book....Frank and quite strong.” —The Nation

“Warren's moment has arrived....To understand why Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the fastest-rising new star in the Democratic Party...read her new book....A Fighting Chance tells true and important tales about the great scandal of our age, the corruptions that engulf Washington today, and the battles of good people to reform them....[Warren] stands for the integrity and spirit that Americans hunger for in public life, which could someday bring her from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other.” —The Hill

“[A] call to arms...Reading the rousing finale of A Fighting Chance … you can hear the sound of the crowd roaring with approval.” —Mother Jones

“[Warren] displays a down-home charm and an effortless rapport with everyday people....The book is more memoir than manifesto; Warren emerges as a committed advocate with real world sensibility, who tasted tough economic times at an early age and did not forget its bitterness.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A passionate memoir of one woman's personal story and the larger story of corruption in financial circles and the need for reform that balances the interests of the American middle class against those of the corporate sector....[Warren] offers a behind-the-scenes look at the political dealmaking and head-butting machinations in efforts to restore the nation's financial system.” —Booklist (starred review)

Kirkus Reviews

2014-04-01
In this engaging memoir, Massachusetts Sen. Warren (co-author: All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, 2005, etc.) introduces her family and recounts the battles that shaped her career as a teacher and politician. Educated as a specialist in contract law, the author reshaped her career to become one of the country's leading experts in bankruptcy after the law was amended in 1981. Seeking to understand why people were going bankrupt in increasing numbers, Warren began to accumulate evidence contradicting the orthodox view that people seeking protection from creditors via the bankruptcy courts were deadbeats "who existed at the economic margins and would always be there." She began to understand that bankruptcy was affecting ordinary middle-class people who found themselves unable to face the financial consequences of job loss, sickness or other personal catastrophes. These elements resonated within her own family: Her father lost his job and suffered repeated sicknesses, and her grandchildren have ongoing health issues. Warren pushed further to identify how credit-issuing institutions were taking advantage of consumers in manipulative ways. The expertise she developed led to a request for her to join the staff of a presidential commission on bankruptcy in 1995. The author uses her legal background, political knowledge gained from a succession of appointments involving bankruptcy law, an investigation into the financial crisis of 2008, and her proposal for a Consumer Finance Agency to provide intriguingly detailed information about the politics of bankruptcy, banking and credit. She introduces leading figures with whom her career has intersected, including Sen. Edward Kennedy and Congressman Barney Frank, and she shows how her continuing concerns with the financial plight of the middle class shaped her approach to the battles she felt called to fight. The book also covers her Massachusetts senatorial campaign. A frankly partisan memoir that provides shrewd insights into both national politics and the state of the middle class.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171837884
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	04/22/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

A Fighting Chance

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By Elizabeth Warren

Picador

Copyright © 2015 Elizabeth Warren
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-06225-3

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Prologue
A Fighting Chance

I’m Elizabeth Warren. I’m a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. For nearly all my life, I would have said I’m a teacher, but I guess I really can’t say that anymore. Now I’d have to introduce myself as a United States senator, though I still feel a small jolt of surprise whenever I say that.

This is my story, and it’s a story born of gratitude.

My daddy was a maintenance man and my mother worked the phones at Sears. More than anything, my parents wanted to give my three older brothers and me a future. And all four of us have lived good lives. My oldest brother, Don Reed, served twenty years in the military, with 288 combat missions in Vietnam to his credit. In good years, my brother John had a union job operating a crane, and in leaner years he took whatever construction work he could get. My brother David had a special spark; he started his own business, and when that didn’t work out, he started another business, because he couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn’t living by his wits every day. I went to college and became a teacher, first for special-needs kids and then for law students; only much later did I get involved in politics. My brothers and I all married and had children, and my parents plastered their walls, their refrigerator, and their tabletops with pictures of their much-loved grandchildren.

I will be grateful to my mother and daddy until the day I die. They worked hard—really hard—to help my brothers and me along. But we also succeeded, at least in part, because we were lucky enough to grow up in an America that invested in kids like us and helped build a future where we could flourish.

Here’s the hard truth: America isn’t building that kind of future any longer.

Today the game is rigged—rigged to work for those who have money and power. Big corporations hire armies of lobbyists to get billion-dollar loopholes into the tax system and persuade their friends in Congress to support laws that keep the playing field tilted in their favor. Meanwhile, hardworking families are told that they’ll just have to live with smaller dreams for their children.

Over the past generation, America’s determination to give every kid access to affordable college or technical training has faded. The basic infrastructure that helps us build thriving businesses and jobs—the roads, bridges, and power grids—has crumbled. The scientific and medical research that has sparked miraculous cures and inventions from the Internet to nanotechnology is starved for funding, and the research pipeline is shrinking. The optimism that defines us as a people has been beaten and bruised.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I am determined—fiercely determined—to do everything I can to help us once again be the America that creates opportunities for anyone who works hard and plays by the rules. An America of accountability and fair play. An America that builds a future for not just some of our children but for all of our children. An America where everyone gets what I got: a fighting chance.

My story seems pretty unlikely, even to me. I never expected to run for office—but then again, I never expected to do a lot of things in my life. I never expected to climb a mountain. I never expected to meet the president of the United States. I never expected to be a blonde. But here I am.

The story starts in Oklahoma, where I grew up, and it tumbles through a life built around husbands and babies and setting the kitchen on fire. I made my way to a commuter college, a teaching job, a public law school, and, eventually, a professorship. As I started weaving in academic research, I became more and more worried about what was happening to America’s families, and the story shifted to Washington, where I picked my first public fight. In 1995, I agreed to take on what I thought would be some part-time public service for a couple of years, and I quickly got caught up in a battle over our nation’s bankruptcy law. I know that sounds a little obscure, but underneath it was a clash about whether our government exists to serve giant banks or struggling families.

The battle lasted much longer than I’d expected—a full ten years, in fact. My own life threaded through, of course, with graduations and funerals and grandchildren of my own. When that battle ended, I picked up another, and then another and another—a total of five big fights in all. They ranged from fighting for a fresh start for families who had suffered a job loss or a serious illness, to trying to force the government to be transparent about what was really going on with the bank bailout, to tangling with the big banks over dishonest mortgages. But the way I see it, even as they took me this way and that, all five battles were about a single, deeper threat: America’s middle class is under attack. Worse, it’s not under attack by some unstoppable force of nature. It’s in trouble because the game is deliberately rigged.

This book tells a very public story about fraud and bailouts and elections. It also tells a very personal story about mothers and daughters, day care and dogs, aging parents and cranky toddlers. It’s not meant to be a definitive account of any historical event—it’s just what I saw and what I lived. It’s also a story about losing, learning, and getting stronger along the way. It’s a story about what’s worth fighting for, and how sometimes, even when we fight against very powerful opponents, we can win.

I never expected to go to Washington. Heck, for the most part I never even wanted to go. But I’m here to fight for something that I believe is worth absolutely everything: to give each one of our kids a fighting chance to build a future full of promise and discovery.

Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Warren

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren. Copyright © 2015 Elizabeth Warren. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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