c_rabbit's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
__karen__'s review against another edition
5.0
The Senator Next Door, as the title implies, is largely about Klobuchar's career as a prosecutor and U.S. senator. It's an interesting read (or listen) about this moderate Democrat who's now running for president. I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by the author.
casehouse's review against another edition
3.0
A bit dry and slow at times, but I enjoyed learning more about Klobuchar's roots and early life.
dwheeler88's review against another edition
5.0
I very much enjoyed reading this book. Amy is both humerus and real as she tells us her story of her life thus far. While there were probably too many name and places that didn’t necessarily need to be called out, as a Minnesota native, I enjoyed her walk down memory lane.
The thing I love most about Amy in this book is her warm confidence. She owns her decisions, even if that means sitting on a pillow or mistaking a bowl of thousand island dressing as soup on accident. While witty and will sometimes lay a quick jab, Amy also is intentional about building relationships and finding common ground amongst her peers.
The progress she’s made and the honesty about how difficult it is to get things done in the senate reinforce how ready she actual is to be president if she gets the candidacy. She’s walked the walk. She knows how the system does and doesn’t work and she’s not afraid to fight for what she believes is right.
The thing I love most about Amy in this book is her warm confidence. She owns her decisions, even if that means sitting on a pillow or mistaking a bowl of thousand island dressing as soup on accident. While witty and will sometimes lay a quick jab, Amy also is intentional about building relationships and finding common ground amongst her peers.
The progress she’s made and the honesty about how difficult it is to get things done in the senate reinforce how ready she actual is to be president if she gets the candidacy. She’s walked the walk. She knows how the system does and doesn’t work and she’s not afraid to fight for what she believes is right.
p3rian's review against another edition
3.0
What I like about Amy is her pragmatism and collaborative approach to problems. She cares less about which side her colleagues start from and more about the common ground they have for a solution. Does she rock my world? No. Is the right president for the future? Maybe.
Loved a quote she referenced in her epilogue... obstacles on the path are not obstacles... they are the path.
Loved a quote she referenced in her epilogue... obstacles on the path are not obstacles... they are the path.
ifoundtheme's review against another edition
2.0
Two stars as a review of the book, not the person. There's not much driving action, and she recounts gruesome details from murder cases she worked on in more titillating detail than is at all useful to her points.
As a politician, based solely on this book, it sounds like she is a solid representative of the values she grew up with– which might be great representation for Minnesota (I don't know). On a national stage, I would not be really upset if she were elected, but I would be disappointed. She'd do fine assuming we wanted to maintain a roughly linear trend of evolving progressivism; not a great choice for making bold changes in the face of real crisis.
As a politician, based solely on this book, it sounds like she is a solid representative of the values she grew up with– which might be great representation for Minnesota (I don't know). On a national stage, I would not be really upset if she were elected, but I would be disappointed. She'd do fine assuming we wanted to maintain a roughly linear trend of evolving progressivism; not a great choice for making bold changes in the face of real crisis.
bjanuscheitis's review against another edition
4.0
I normally stay away from politicians memoirs, but I enjoyed this book. It's easy to read and has humor. I especially liked the first part of the book that told about her family and growing up years in Plymouth, MN. The last portion of the book, after she was elected Senator got kind of predictable. Except for a passage about Ted Cruz, there's not a lot of gossip about the Washington crowd.
ashleysbooknook's review against another edition
3.0
The first half about her time as a prosecutor was pretty boring, but I enjoyed the second half about her politics and time as a senator. At first I was kind of bothered about the way she talked about herself. She seemed proud. But then toward the end she says how she doesn’t like talking negatively about others and I realized that that was true in the book. She didn’t talk negatively about her opponents! She did spend a lot of time talking about random people that I didn’t really care to hear that much about. But, again, I enjoyed her talk of politics. She talks about how negotiation has died and being moderate is political suicide. She believes in compromise and working together. I love this! We need more politician who do this! Overall the book was ok .
squirrelfish's review against another edition
3.0
This book was one of the most personal of the presidential candidate books, describing Senator Klobuchar's life in amazing detail. I've noticed that women autobiographers tend to describe more of their home lives and relationships and this is an example of that to an extreme. She gives names and details of people she hung out with from middle school through those she works with in the Senate now. The details on incidents from the 70s and 80s is amazing - I can't remember those details from my high school and college days and they were 20 years more recent. There's also a through line of an unapologetic love for all things Minnesota - which makes sense for a Senator.
Her personal life takes up the majority of the book, but she does discuss what she was doing professionally, first as an attorney, then Hennepin County Attorney(something like a DA), and then as Senator. In those discussions political positions do reveal themselves, but there's much more discussion of bipartisanship and being a moderate than any specific platform. She was active among Minnesota Democratic circles from a young age, and seems to have had something of a mentorship by Walter Mondale, first as an intern, then associate and later one of her partners at a Minneapolis law firm. From becoming one of the youngest partners at a Democratic law firm she moved to a Republican one, emphasizing that the people at both law firms treated her with respect and remained supportive even as she ran for political office.
She remains proud of her first major political issue - making a health insurance requirement that new mothers be discharged the same day they gave birth illegal. It was inspired by her experiences as a new mother of an ill child, and having to leave the hospital while she was recovering and her daughter was in Neonatal ICU. In early chapters she discussed her fathers' fight with alcoholism, her parents divorce and other personal issues as well. She goes into some of the main issues she worked on in her role for Hennepin County, including a tough-on-crime record, collecting conviction data and campaigning to make 3+ DUIs a felony. Office furniture politics gets almost as much of a mention as her pride in Minnesota having the largest Somali population in the country and her work to make sure the refugee community knew they got equal protecting under the law. Klobuchar emphasizes a responsibility to victims not just to prosecute the cases they can win, but to make sure the victims knew why cases did or did not go to court.
I initially thought some of her choices were impressively loyal regarding claiming disgraced people as friends, but then I saw this came out in 2015. I'm not saying she wouldn't have still spoken up for law-school classmate James Comey, or fellow Minnesota Senator Al Franken, but it's not quite the loyalty in face of adversity I initially saw. The bit about bi-partisan coalitions was also something I hadn't seen in the other candidate books, but as with the lack of discussion of Trump, it's something that has a different context when seen in the rearview mirror. I do like the way she describes being a moderate - not as a halfway position between two parties, but as an acknowledgment that there is a complex and varied set of issues and they don't all naturally fall to one party position or the other. Regarding her political positions as a Senator she discusses the need to end endless war, help Veterans, carefully choose trade agreements, mentioning that she supports some and rejects others, and reaffirms her commitment to refugees and immigrants. Oh, and she brings up and credits her local tribes with the indigenous concept of responsibilities out to the 7th Generation and her belief that this ethic, and a general longer-term thinking, belong in Washington.
In a very nice closing chapter she brings up that definition of being a moderate, the Republicans she has worked with in the past, and a Slovenian quote "The obstacles in your path are not obstacles, they are the path". She uses this obstacles analogy to discuss how American democracy will overcome incalcitrant Republicans and how we'll vote them out if they keep misbehaving. It's a nice and hopeful way to think of things.
Overall, I'd say this had the simplest reading level, greatest detail of personal life, least politics, and most love of her state of any of the books for this project so far. Perhaps aimed more at a Senatorial candidacy than a Presidential one? She doesn't particularly impress me as a candidate, but as I said regarding the [a:Bernie Sanders|102824|Bernie Sanders|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300822269p2/102824.jpg] review - the political positions are why I read this kind of thing, and this was light on political platform.
Read as an audiobook through Libby and the San Francisco Public Library. Book 6 of my readings of Presidential Candidates.
Her personal life takes up the majority of the book, but she does discuss what she was doing professionally, first as an attorney, then Hennepin County Attorney(something like a DA), and then as Senator. In those discussions political positions do reveal themselves, but there's much more discussion of bipartisanship and being a moderate than any specific platform. She was active among Minnesota Democratic circles from a young age, and seems to have had something of a mentorship by Walter Mondale, first as an intern, then associate and later one of her partners at a Minneapolis law firm. From becoming one of the youngest partners at a Democratic law firm she moved to a Republican one, emphasizing that the people at both law firms treated her with respect and remained supportive even as she ran for political office.
She remains proud of her first major political issue - making a health insurance requirement that new mothers be discharged the same day they gave birth illegal. It was inspired by her experiences as a new mother of an ill child, and having to leave the hospital while she was recovering and her daughter was in Neonatal ICU. In early chapters she discussed her fathers' fight with alcoholism, her parents divorce and other personal issues as well. She goes into some of the main issues she worked on in her role for Hennepin County, including a tough-on-crime record, collecting conviction data and campaigning to make 3+ DUIs a felony. Office furniture politics gets almost as much of a mention as her pride in Minnesota having the largest Somali population in the country and her work to make sure the refugee community knew they got equal protecting under the law. Klobuchar emphasizes a responsibility to victims not just to prosecute the cases they can win, but to make sure the victims knew why cases did or did not go to court.
I initially thought some of her choices were impressively loyal regarding claiming disgraced people as friends, but then I saw this came out in 2015. I'm not saying she wouldn't have still spoken up for law-school classmate James Comey, or fellow Minnesota Senator Al Franken, but it's not quite the loyalty in face of adversity I initially saw. The bit about bi-partisan coalitions was also something I hadn't seen in the other candidate books, but as with the lack of discussion of Trump, it's something that has a different context when seen in the rearview mirror. I do like the way she describes being a moderate - not as a halfway position between two parties, but as an acknowledgment that there is a complex and varied set of issues and they don't all naturally fall to one party position or the other. Regarding her political positions as a Senator she discusses the need to end endless war, help Veterans, carefully choose trade agreements, mentioning that she supports some and rejects others, and reaffirms her commitment to refugees and immigrants. Oh, and she brings up and credits her local tribes with the indigenous concept of responsibilities out to the 7th Generation and her belief that this ethic, and a general longer-term thinking, belong in Washington.
In a very nice closing chapter she brings up that definition of being a moderate, the Republicans she has worked with in the past, and a Slovenian quote "The obstacles in your path are not obstacles, they are the path". She uses this obstacles analogy to discuss how American democracy will overcome incalcitrant Republicans and how we'll vote them out if they keep misbehaving. It's a nice and hopeful way to think of things.
Overall, I'd say this had the simplest reading level, greatest detail of personal life, least politics, and most love of her state of any of the books for this project so far. Perhaps aimed more at a Senatorial candidacy than a Presidential one? She doesn't particularly impress me as a candidate, but as I said regarding the [a:Bernie Sanders|102824|Bernie Sanders|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1300822269p2/102824.jpg] review - the political positions are why I read this kind of thing, and this was light on political platform.
Read as an audiobook through Libby and the San Francisco Public Library. Book 6 of my readings of Presidential Candidates.