About The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir by Samantha Power
Today I finished my favorite book of the year. The Education of an Idealist, a memoir by Samantha Power is the most interesting book I have read in quite a while. It tells the story of a woman, who immigrated to the US from Ireland as a child. After being a war correspondent, she aided Obama’s presidential campaign, served in the Obama administration as part of the National Security Council, and ultimately served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. Describing her career in this manner would make for a boring book. Her memoir on the other hand is anything but boring. I could not put the book down. I was falling asleep with my Kindle in hand, and would pick up the story when I woke up at 6:30am in the morning.
The first chapters cover her early childhood and relationship with her father in Ireland. They provide an important backdrop for what comes later in the book. The book gets really interesting in the chapters about the Bosnian war. Her years as a war-time journalist during the Bosnian war in the 90s shaped much of her later career.
Reading the book, I kept getting side tracked in looking up stories online about Bosnia, the siege of Sarajevo, Mladic, Karadzic, and others. And I was only 125 pages into the book. When I shared this tweet on the book, I was surprised how many people agreed, and had a similar experience.
Reading @SamanthaJPower's Education of an Idealist, I keep getting side tracked in reading stories about Bosnia, Sarajevo, @RohdeD, Mladic, etc. And that's only 125 pages into the book. It is probably the most fascinating book I have been reading all year.
— waffletchnlgy 🚴 (@waffletchnlgy) December 6, 2020
What stuck with me about her life thusfar is that, she didn’t waste a moment to further her causes. For example, during a Holocaust remembrance event, when she caught president Barack Obama on his way to the bathroom, she kept pressing him to recognize the Armenian genocide. “Hi Sam, how is your pregnancy going?” “Good, but let’s talk about the genocide.”
Regardless of having degrees from Yale and Harvard, and being part of Obama’s inner circle, she comes across as level headed, insecure, and second guessing herself. Living among the A-players in Silicon Valley, it is refreshing to read such humble and honest account.
The later part of the book provides a behind the scenes of the Obama administration and what happens in the corridors of the United Nations.
At first I was turned off by some of the stories. The US felt content winning seemingly theoretical arguments at the UN: we snuck in word similar to genocide, or the UN maps still show Crimea as Ukrainian. It seemed like a Harvard academic debate. I don’t think the people living in Sebastopol, Yalta or Kalynivka experience any difference whether the UN map draws the line here to there, when the flag at city hall is white, blue and red, rather than blue and yellow.
However, as the stories evolve, it becomes clear how real the work is at the United Nations. Real people get real food, real medicines, and real protection by the blue or white helmets. Communities in East Ukraine, Darfur, Syria, or the LBGT community around the world experience a real difference because of the actions by the United Nations. What looks like an academic exercise in words, is not an academic exercise at all.
It also is very clear how evil Russia and Putin are, whether it is by refusing humanitarian aid into bombarded cities in Syrian or by objecting to “vulnerable populations” in a document about the LGBT community. At first Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, comes across as sympathetic. He even joined the Sunstein-Power household for Thanksgiving one year. However, it quickly becomes clear he is only a Putin-puppet and fully complicit.
Reading the book, I became also a lot more aware and amazed by the US response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa. It also made me think about how we would have handled the covid pandemic if it had happened 4 years earlier. I know we would have been in better hands and with better leadership. Coincidently on the day of reading the Ebola chapter, while running, I also listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History episode Druid Hills, about the work at Emory University in Atlanta, the unsung hero in pandemic response and important medical research.
The book ends as the Trump administration is about to take office. As I raced to the final chapter, I wondered what Samantha Power must be thinking about Trump’s undoing of all the things she worked so hard on: the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, a pandemic response, standing up to Russia, or merely the basics of diplomacy and respect for women. As a fellow immigrant to the United States, I already know the answer. An isolated United States is worse off than one who would leads the world by example.
I hope Samantha Power will have the opportunity in the Biden administration to pick up where she left off, and restore a dignified place in the world for the United States.