Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in America - Softcover

Brazile, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074325399X ISBN 13: 9780743253994

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2005

Synopsis

Cooking with Grease is an inspiring, behind-the-scenes memoir of the life and times of a tenacious political organizer and the first African-American woman to head a major presidential campaign.
Donna Brazile fought her first political fight at age nine -- campaigning (successfully) for a city council candidate who promised a playground in her neighborhood. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she committed her heart and her future to political and social activism. By the 2000 presidential election, Brazile had become a major player in American political history -- and she remains one of the most outspoken and forceful political activists of our day.
Brazile grew up one of nine children in a working-poor family in New Orleans, a place where talking politics comes as naturally as stirring a pot of seafood gumbo -- and where the two often go hand in hand. Growing up, she learned how to cook from watching her mother, Jean, stir the pots in their family kitchen. She inherited her love of reading and politics from her grandmother Frances. Her brothers Teddy Man and Chet worked as foot soldiers in her early business schemes and in her voter registration efforts as a child.
Cooking with Grease follows Donna's rise to greater and greater political and personal accomplishments. But each new career success came with its own kind of heartache, especially in her greatest challenge: leading Al Gore's 2000 campaign, making her the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign.
Cooking with Grease is an intimate account of Donna's thirty years in politics. Her witty style and innovative political strategies have garnered her the respect and admiration of colleagues and adversaries alike -- she is as comfortable trading quips with Karl Rove as she is with her Democratic colleagues. Her story is as warm and nourishing as a bowl of Brazile family gumbo.

About this title

Review

Harvard professor, Washington power broker and former Gore 2000 campaign chair Donna Brazile's life might make for a pretty entertaining Hollywood movie if an actress could be found gutsy enough to take on such a complex and intimidating leading role. From humble blue-collar Louisiana beginnings as one of nine children, Brazile went on to organize voter registration drives, marches to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr., and ultimately national political campaigns. In her memoir Cooking With Grease, Brazile shares candid perspectives on her employers and causes. And while Mike Dukakis and Dick Gephardt fans will be pleased to know their men are included, it is the insights on the charismatic preacher/activist/presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and Al Gore, whom Brazile insists won the controversial 2000 election, that make this a must read for devotees of modern political history. Her accounts of being backstage in the Gore camp shed valuable light on the tense political climate of that year's election and post-election recount mess in a way that only a select few from either the Bush or Gore campaigns could legitimately offer. Still, none of the candidates shine quite so brightly in this book as the author herself. Washington is, after all, operated, with a few exceptions, by moneyed white men and for a black woman from a humble background to succeed requires determination, a quick wit, and a powerful intellect. As Brazile climbs the political ladder, those qualities come in to sharp relief. But while Cooking With Grease is inspirational, and Brazile really ought to be auctioning the film rights if she hasn't already done so, it doesn't preach, inspiring by example rather than exhorting the reader to follow Brazile's own course of action. --John Moe

About the Author

Donna Brazile is a senior political strategist and former campaign manager for Gore-Lieberman 2000 -- the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign. She is currently chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 074325399X
• ISBN 13: 9780743253994
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368