Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin

On September 3, 2008 Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave a speech at the Republican National Convention that electrified the nation and instantly made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

As chief executive of America′s largest state, she had built a record as a reformer who cast aside politics-as-usual and pushed through changes other politicians only talked about: Energy independence. Ethics reform. And the biggest private sector infrastructure project in U.S. history. While revitalizing public school funding and ensuring the state met its responsibilities to seniors and Alaska Native populations, Palin also beat the political "good ol′ boys club" at their own game and brought Big Oil to heel.

Like her GOP running mate, John McCain, Palin wasn′t a packaged and over-produced "candidate." She was a Main Street American woman: a working mom, wife of a blue collar union man, and mother of five children, the eldest of whom was serving his country in a yearlong deployment in Iraq and the youngest, an infant with special needs. Palin′s hometown story touched a populist nerve, rallying hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to the GOP ticket.

I like to think that my reading choices are politically, religiously, and in many other ways, unbiased so after reading the two Barack Obama books - Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope - I thought I would give this book a try.  It has been lying on my tbr (to be read) shelf since 2009 after the last election so when I needed a new book to read on this years election night, I thought what better choice, I would finally give this one a go.

It was a very interesting book.  This woman should be the next President of the USA as she seems to have all the answers to all the problems and has the drive and ability to implement them.  Or at least according to herself in this book. 

I won't get political but I did agree with some of her points and disagree with some, which ones are my own business but I could not get over how much this person thinks of herself.  I guess to go into politics one has to think quite highly of oneself but she seemed to come across (as they say in Scotland) "Up her own arse", which basically means it is all about her and everyone else must be wrong.

I understand that you cannot believe everything you see in the media and that editing can make anyone look anyway the editor wants so what is the real truth?  In my opinion, it must be somewhere in the middle between the media portrayal of Ms Palin and her own opinion as expressed in this book.  She has quite the conspiracy theories going on about everyone around her.

The writing itself was a bit mixed up.  The book could not decide whether it was her personal memoir (like Dreams of my Father) or her political manifesto (like The Audacity of Hope) and she would have been better splitting it into two books just like President Obama did with his.  I would have enjoyed to read her personal story on it's own more and then had the choice to read her political story separately.

The story itself showed a lot of naivety in the author and her surprise at the backlash after and during her VP candidacy must have been expected (even if it isn't nice, sadly, that is the way of the world today).

I have given it 3 out of 5, which you may think is quite generous, but it wasn't a badly written book and it did keep me reading to the end so credit where credit is due.  Not one I would recommend reading unless you have a particular interest in the author and I can't think of any reason why anyone outside her own family would!