Though the deck may be stacked, she says it’s still possible for the little guy to win, pointing to the new consumer protection agency as one such victory. Warren walks a fine line in unspooling her story of a rigged system. It would be fascinating to learn how that conversion unfolded, but it won’t be here. It’s easy to imagine a confluence between Warren’s earlier awakenings to the depredations of “crony capitalism” and the anger of today’s Tea Party types. Warren was a tenured law professor in her 40s - focused on issues at the core of political identity - when she apparently lost faith in unbridled market systems. That’s not youthful zeal of the kind Clinton exhibited as a “Goldwater girl” in high school. Though she is the national avatar of a new full-throated Democratic liberalism, Warren was a registered Republican until the mid-1990s. Such books tend to be particularly prone to glossing over inconvenient chapters that might cloud the story line. Governor Deval Patrick and Brown both have had their say Hillary Rodham Clinton’s offering is due later this year. Warren’s is an example of a new brand of political memoir, carefully calibrated in the thick of a rising career, not published after it’s over. What’s more, Warren’s ability to translate complicated finance issues into plain English and parables that appeal to a basic sense of fair play is what’s helped rocket her to national prominence, complete with speculation about White House ambitions that her book contract only heightened. But her storytelling is well-paced and engaging. “Heck” appears more than a half-dozen times, usually as its own exclamatory clause at the start of a sentence. Warren can get carried away with Okie argot.

Banking lobbyists insist it is necessary nuance she says it’s often just part of the elaborate hoodwinking of consumers. ) that accompanies many financial dealings.

She evinces a homespun disdain for the fine print (“legal mumbo jumbo” But Warren’s guiding sensibilities here seem much more heartland than Harvard. Warren was tagged relentlessly as an Ivy League elitist by Brown during their Senate showdown and by her many detractors on the right. Her national star rose quickly during that time, setting in motion her Senate run, where she reclaimed for Democrats the seat Scott Brown barely had a chance to warm. She mixes policy points with rich behind-the-scenes anecdotes, several centered on the tensions between her bank-bashing populism and the more Wall Street-friendly ways of Timothy Geithner, President Obama’s first Treasury secretary, and former Harvard president Larry Summers, a key White House economic adviser.

A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren