The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a hard book to rate or review because the substance is great, but I really think the order of the topics hurts her case. Like some of the other Election 2020 memoirs that are coming out the substance is more policy than a memoir. I'm generally a fan of that concept as I want to know what the candidates stand for, but that generally makes for bad memoirs.

But okay, if we're going to learn about what Kamala stands for, do we want to start for criminal justice reform? I don't think that's the winning focus for 2020, but because she was faking the memoir style, she started with her career expertise. The beginning felt extremely weak and boring and that was unideal. She should have started with economics and global warming probably in terms of election importance and actual importance. I almost quit reading the book before she hit her stride. I'm glad I didn't though because towards the end I felt a lot more persuaded by her thinking.

I particularly like how she talks about data collection in developing solutions in public policy. Some years ago I read the Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo book, Poor Economics, about this very topic, and I found it to be a complete game-changer in the way I think about policy data.

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