Peter Slevin

discusses

Michelle Obama:
A Life

Co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School

This event includes a book signing

Date

Apr
17
Friday
April 17, 2015
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes journalist PETER SLEVIN for a discussion of his book Michelle Obama: A Life. This event is co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.

An inspiring story, richly detailed and written with élan, here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama, a woman of achievement and purpose—and the most unlikely first lady in modern American history. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller’s eye for revealing detail, Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago’s largely segregated South Side.

The journey winds from the intricacies of her upbringing as the highly focused daughter of a gregarious city water-plant worker afflicted with multiple sclerosis to the tribulations she faces at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s. And then returning to Chicago, where she works in an elite law firm and meets a law student from Hawaii named Barack Obama. Unsatisfied by corporate law, Michelle embarks on a search for meaningful work that takes her back to the community of her South Side youth, even as she struggles to find balance as a mother and a professional—while married to a man who wants to be president. 

Slevin deftly explores the drama of Barack’s historic campaigns and the harsh glare faced by Michelle in a role both relentlessly public and not entirely of her choosing. He offers a fresh and compelling view of the White House years when Michelle Obama casts herself as mentor, teacher, champion of nutrition, supporter of military families, and fervent opponent of inequality. 

Peter Slevin
Peter Slevin

Peter Slevin

Peter Slevin spent a decade on the national staff of The Washington Post before joining Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he is an associate professor. He has written extensively about Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as political campaigns and policy debates from one end of the country to the other. Slevin graduated from Princeton and Oxford. He lives with his family in Evanston, Illinois. 

Photo Credit: Andrew Johnston

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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Event Co-Sponsor(s)

Hutchins Center for African and African American Research: http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/

Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School: http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/

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Featured event books will be for sale at the event for 20% off. Thank you for supporting this author series with your purchases.
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