Staff Pick
Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey, has enjoyed a remarkable political ascendancy. In his first book, United: Thoughts On Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, the former Newark mayor and city councilman offers the obligatory biographical sketch, as well as insight into the formative personal and political experiences that have molded and informed his belief system and governing priorities. Perhaps most noteworthy for a political memoir, Booker doesn't dwell on his own upbringing, education, or accomplishments, instead detailing the individuals and causes that have inspired and encouraged him to help create a better world.
Senator Booker writes movingly about his commitments to confronting issues of poverty, income inequality, accessible housing, education, criminal justice reform, and environmental activism. The senator's compassion, humility, attentiveness, unwavering advocacy, and respect for differences are enviable traits that set him apart from so much of the dysfunction and discord currently plaguing national politics. It would appear that Senator Booker's trajectory will one day lead to a White House bid, and his selfless work on behalf of constituents will surely make him a formidable candidate. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A passionate new voice in American politics, United States Senator Cory Booker makes the case that the virtues of empathy, responsibility, and action must guide our nation toward a brighter future.
Raised in northern New Jersey, Cory Booker went to Stanford University on a football scholarship, accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, then studied at Yale Law School. Graduating from Yale, his options were limitless.
He chose public service.
He chose to move to a rough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked as a tenants rights lawyer before winning a seat on the City Council. In 2006, he was elected mayor, and for more than seven years he was the public face of an American city that had gone decades with too little positive national attention and investment. In 2013, Booker became the first African American elected to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate.
In United, Cory Booker draws on personal experience to issue a stirring call to reorient our nation and our politics around the principles of compassion and solidarity. He speaks of rising above despair to engage with hope, pursuing our shared mission, and embracing our common destiny.
Here is his account of his own political education, the moments some entertaining, some heartbreaking, all of them enlightening that have shaped his civic vision. Here are the lessons Booker learned from the remarkable people who inspired him to serve, men and women whose example fueled his desire to create opportunities for others. Here also are his observations on the issues he cares about most deeply, from race and crime and the crisis of mass incarceration to economic and environmental justice.
"Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word," Booker writes in this galvanizing book. In a world where we too easily lose touch with our neighbors, he argues, we must remember that we all rise or fall together and that we must move beyond mere tolerance for one another toward a deeper connection: love.
About the Author
Cory Booker is the United States Senator from New Jersey. Born in Washington, D.C., his parents worked for IBM and relocated the family to Harrington Park, NJ. A star high school athlete, Booker earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford, where he also played for the football team. While at college, Booker ran a crisis hotline for students and worked with disadvantaged youth in East Palo Alto. He then attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before earning his law degree from Yale. Booker won a special election to fill the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg to become became New Jersey’s first African-American senator and only the 21st person in American history to go straight from Mayor to Senator.