The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER

An intimate, powerful, and galvanizing memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner, human rights advocate, and former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. Named one of the best books of the year:

The New York Times • National Public Radio • Time • The Economist • The Washington Post • Vanity Fair • Christian Science Monitor • Publishers Weekly • Audible

“Her highly personal and reflective memoir . . . is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world.”—President Barack Obama

Includes an updated afterword

Tracing her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official, Samantha Power’s acclaimed memoir is a unique blend of suspenseful storytelling, vivid character portraits, and shrewd political insight. After her critiques of US foreign policy caught the eye of Senator Barack Obama, he invited her to work with him on Capitol Hill and then on his presidential campaign. When Obama won the presidency, Power went from being an activist outsider to serving as his human rights adviser and, in 2013, becoming the youngest-ever US Ambassador to the United Nations. Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy, offering a compelling and deeply honest look at navigating the halls of power while trying to put one’s ideals into practice. Along the way, she lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life, shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with raising two young children, and makes the case for how we each can advance the cause of human dignity. This is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism—and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference.

“This is a wonderful book. […] The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly and with unblinking honesty.”—THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times Book Review 

“Truly engrossing…A pleasure to read.”—RACHEL MADDOW

“A beautiful memoir about the times we’re living in and the questions we must ask ourselves…I honestly couldn’t put it down.” —CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild

“Power’s compelling memoir provides critically important insights we should all understand as we face some of the most vexing issues of our time.” —BRYAN STEVENSON, author of Just Mercy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062820716
Publisher:	Dey Street Books
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	42,779
File size:	67 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Samantha Power is a Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School. From 2013-2017, Power served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a member of President Obama’s cabinet. From 2009-2013, Power served on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Power began her career as a journalist, reporting from places such as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and she was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.  Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. She is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Chasing the Flame: One Man’s Fight to Save the World (2008) and The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir (2019), which was named one of the best books of 2019 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, NPR, and TIME. Power earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. 

Date of Birth:

September 21, 1970

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Education:

Yale University and Harvard Law School

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Part 1 1

1 Ireland 3

2 America 16

3 Loss 24

4 Dignity 33

5 Tank Man 40

6 Doers 50

7 Risk 62

8 Hearts of Darkness 72

9 "Tell Clinton" 83

10 The Secret to a Long Life 93

11 "Go Remember" 107

12 "A Problem from Hell" 118

13 Upstanders 131

14 Going to Washington 144

15 The Bat Cave 157

16 Yes We Can 169

17 Monster 181

18 Victory 199

Part 2 209

19 No Manual 211

20 Can We Go Home Now? 224

21 April 24^th 234

22 Turnaround 247

23 Toolbox 266

24 Revolutions 283

25 All Necessary Measures 297

26 Let's Pray They Accomplish Something 312

27 One Shot 328

28 "Can't Be Both" 341

29 The Red Line 359

30 "Chemical Weapons Were Used" 372

31 When America Sneezes 391

32 Upside-Down Land 403

33 Us and Them 420

34 'Freedom from Fear 434

35 Lean On 458

36 Toussaint 471

37 The Golden Door 490

38 Exit, Voice, Loyalty 502

39 Shrink the Change 517

40 The End 528

Afterword 543

Acknowledgments 553

Notes 557

Index 569

Editorial Reviews

04/01/2019

Irish-born Power has moved from war correspondent to founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School to U.S. Ambassador to the UN, and she's a Pulitzer Prize winner for "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. So she's got some story to tell. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

★ 08/26/2019

In vividly told scenes, with bracing honesty and breathless prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner Power (A Problem from Hell) reflects on the roads that led from her college days at Yale to her work in the U.S. government. She graduated from Harvard Law School, and in 2005 met Sen. Barack Obama, who asked her to serve as a foreign policy adviser. After his presidential election, Obama brought Power into the National Security Council in 2009, and from 2013 to 2017, she served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Power takes readers behind the scenes of her visits to Libya during the final tense days of the Qaddafi regime, pointing out that in spite of the downturn in security, Libya’s citizens agreed that they wanted no international presence in their country, but to determine their own future. She discovered that Burma’s human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi is a bad listener and that it’s not clear that Suu Kyi cared that much about humans. Ultimately, she stresses the necessity of caring, acting, and not giving up when seeking to change people’s lives. Power’s vibrant prose, exuberant storytelling, and deep insights into human nature make for a page-turning memoir. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Lively…and strikingly personal…[Power] writes vividly and lucidly here about her turn in the international spotlight.

Vogue

"Power is a master story-teller . . . a brilliant self-portrait of an outsider turned insider, who is forced to grapple with the challenges that brings, and does so honestly." 

The Independent (Ireland)

"Refreshingly frank and self-deprecating, Power's memoir is an energizing reminder that conscience has a place in the process of shaping foreign policy."

TIME

Samantha Power’s book is honest, personal, revealing. It is about the development of a young woman’s inner strength and self-knowledge. But it is also a political book, alert to both the power of political will and its limitations. It is the journey of an idealist, whose conscience was forged in Bosnia, into the corridors of power where compromise does battle with commitment. It is the story of someone with the soul of an outsider becoming, as an insider, a passionate witness to events in the White House and the United Nations during the Obama years.

COLM TÓIBÍN

"A uniquely personal and absorbing account of [Power's] time at the heart of US foreign policy . . . Power's book gives a riveting fly-on-the wall insight into the Obama administration's foreign-policy decision-making and the inner workings of the United Nations." 

The Irish Times 

Power writes with heart about her upbringing — in Ireland, Pittsburgh and Atlanta — and she is especially poignant when recounting a few traumatic episodes… Still, the book is suffused with humor, and [President Obama] furnishes the funniest anecdotes that don’t come from her charming children…The Education of an Idealist is a moving account of how to serve righteously, or at least how to try.

The Washington Post

Samantha Power’s captivating memoir is a rare and intimate revelation of the inner workings of international diplomacy as well as a heartening beacon of a book for young women and men everywhere. Its stories of dignity, kindness, empathy, and inclusiveness are needed today as never before.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Problem solving in a complex world can challenge idealism. Samantha Power’s compelling memoir provides critically important insights we should all understand as we face some of the most vexing issues of our time.

BRYAN STEVENSON

In this gripping and revelatory memoir, Power chronicles, with vibrant precision and stunning candor, her best and worst moments navigating the obstacle courses within the White House and the UN, daunting global crises, and personal struggles. She is utterly compelling in her eye-witness accounts of violence and political standoffs and shrewdly witty in her tales about balancing diplomacy and motherhood.

starred review Booklist

Engaging….Power’s memoir is an insider’s account of foreign-policy-making, and an intensely personal one.

The Economist

Power writes movingly about everything…and she delivers one of the best-written political memoirs of recent years.

Fareed Zakaria

[Power] is a very good writer, which makes it more fun and truly engrossing to read a memoir about a former U.S. official….A pleasure to read.

Rachel Maddow

Amid the flood of memoirs from Obama administration veterans, Power’s stands out as worth reading. For starters, she’s a better writer than a lot of them—she was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author long before she got into government. She’s also done more that’s worth reading about. Like the best journalists, Power has a gift for finding the perfect anecdote to illustrate a larger idea or theme, and this is the rare political memoir where you definitely shouldn’t skim the “early years” chapters.

Slate

Samantha Power’s memoir gives a candid, self-questioning, intensely personal view of what goes on inside. It should inspire others to test their ideals against the unforgiving world.

GEORGE PACKER

A celebrated writer and an accomplished diplomat, Samantha Power is one of the most outspoken and important voices in world affairs today. Her absorbing, heartfelt, and remarkably candid memoir provides vivid new details about the difficult strategic questions that arose during her years in the Obama administration, and offers essential lessons to anyone aspiring to follow in her footsteps in shaping the world for the better.”  

Secretary of State MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

A foreign policy guru reveals her many selves in a sweeping autobiography

O Magazine

This is a wonderful book.…The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly—and with unblinking honesty.”

Thomas L. Friedman

Samantha Power’s book is honest, personal, revealing. It is about the development of a young woman’s inner strength and self-knowledge. But it is also a political book, alert to both the power of political will and its limitations. It is the journey of an idealist, whose conscience was forged in Bosnia, into the corridors of power where compromise does battle with commitment. It is the story of someone with the soul of an outsider becoming, as an insider, a passionate witness to events in the White House and the United Nations during the Obama years.

COLM TÓIBÍN

Amid the flood of memoirs from Obama administration veterans, Power’s stands out as worth reading. For starters, she’s a better writer than a lot of them—she was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author long before she got into government. She’s also done more that’s worth reading about. Like the best journalists, Power has a gift for finding the perfect anecdote to illustrate a larger idea or theme, and this is the rare political memoir where you definitely shouldn’t skim the “early years” chapters.

Slate

[Power] is a very good writer, which makes it more fun and truly engrossing to read a memoir about a former U.S. official….A pleasure to read.

RACHEL MADDOW

This is a wonderful book.…The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly—and with unblinking honesty.”

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Power writes movingly about everything…and she delivers one of the best-written political memoirs of recent years.

 CNN   FAREED ZAKARIA

A foreign policy guru reveals her many selves in a sweeping autobiography

O Magazine

Engaging….Power’s memoir is an insider’s account of foreign-policy-making, and an intensely personal one.

The Economist

Power writes movingly about everything…and she delivers one of the best-written political memoirs of recent years.” 

 CNN   FAREED ZAKARIA

"Power is a master story-teller . . . a brilliant self-portrait of an outsider turned insider, who is forced to grapple with the challenges that brings, and does so honestly." 

The Independent (Ireland)

Amid the flood of memoirs from Obama administration veterans, Power’s stands out as worth reading. For starters, she’s a better writer than a lot of them—she was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author long before she got into government. She’s also done more that’s worth reading about. Like the best journalists, Power has a gift for finding the perfect anecdote to illustrate a larger idea or theme, and this is the rare political memoir where you definitely shouldn’t skim the “early years” chapters.

Slate

Lively…and strikingly personal…[Power] writes vividly and lucidly here about her turn in the international spotlight.

Vogue

In this gripping and revelatory memoir, Power chronicles, with vibrant precision and stunning candor, her best and worst moments navigating the obstacle courses within the White House and the UN, daunting global crises, and personal struggles. She is utterly compelling in her eye-witness accounts of violence and political standoffs and shrewdly witty in her tales about balancing diplomacy and motherhood.

starred review Booklist

Power writes with heart about her upbringing — in Ireland, Pittsburgh and Atlanta — and she is especially poignant when recounting a few traumatic episodes… Still, the book is suffused with humor, and [President Obama] furnishes the funniest anecdotes that don’t come from her charming children…The Education of an Idealist is a moving account of how to serve righteously, or at least how to try.

The Washington Post

"Refreshingly frank and self-deprecating, Power's memoir is an energizing reminder that conscience has a place in the process of shaping foreign policy."

TIME

"A uniquely personal and absorbing account of [Power's] time at the heart of US foreign policy . . . Power's book gives a riveting fly-on-the wall insight into the Obama administration's foreign-policy decision-making and the inner workings of the United Nations." 

The Irish Times 

Samantha Power’s book is honest, personal, revealing. It is about the development of a young woman’s inner strength and self-knowledge. But it is also a political book, alert to both the power of political will and its limitations. It is the journey of an idealist, whose conscience was forged in Bosnia, into the corridors of power where compromise does battle with commitment. It is the story of someone with the soul of an outsider becoming, as an insider, a passionate witness to events in the White House and the United Nations during the Obama years.

COLM TóIBíN

"A uniquely personal and absorbing account of [Power's] time at the heart of US foreign policy . . . Power's book gives a riveting fly-on-the wall insight into the Obama administration's foreign-policy decision-making and the inner workings of the United Nations."

The Irish Times

Power writes movingly about everything…and she delivers one of the best-written political memoirs of recent years.” 

CNN FAREED ZAKARIA

Power is a master story-teller…a brilliant self-portrait of an outsider turned insider, who is forced to grapple with the challenges that brings, and does so honestly.

The Irish Independent

Samantha Power’s book is honest, personal, revealing. It is about the development of a young woman’s inner strength and self-knowledge. But it is also a political book, alert to both the power of political will and its limitations. It is the journey of an idealist, whose conscience was forged in Bosnia, into the corridors of power where compromise does battle with commitment. It is the story of someone with the soul of an outsider becoming, as an insider, a passionate witness to events in the White House and the United Nations during the Obama years.

COLM ToIBiN

Samantha Power’s book is honest, personal, revealing. It is about the development of a young woman’s inner strength and self-knowledge. But it is also a political book, alert to both the power of political will and its limitations. It is the journey of an idealist, whose conscience was forged in Bosnia, into the corridors of power where compromise does battle with commitment. It is the story of someone with the soul of an outsider becoming, as an insider, a passionate witness to events in the White House and the United Nations during the Obama years.

COLM TOIBIN

Samantha Power’s book is honest, personal, revealing. It is about the development of a young woman’s inner strength and self-knowledge. But it is also a political book, alert to both the power of political will and its limitations. It is the journey of an idealist, whose conscience was forged in Bosnia, into the corridors of power where compromise does battle with commitment. It is the story of someone with the soul of an outsider becoming, as an insider, a passionate witness to events in the White House and the United Nations during the Obama years.

Colm Toibin

Advance Praise for Samantha Power and The Education of an Idealist: “One of our foremost thinkers on foreign policy.

President BARACK OBAMA

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