In a largely positive review of Jodi Kantor’s book The Obamas in the New York Times Book Review, Douglas Brinkley—a historian who has published books about several presidents—wrote, “Call it chick nonfiction, if you will; this book is not about politics, it’s about marriage, or at least one marriage.” 
 
 Call it chick nonfiction? Some people most definitely won’t. 
 
 It’s a little outside my ordinary purview—though Kantor, a New York Times reporter, is Jewish—but the line struck me as newsworthy, particularly given recent discussion accusing the Times Book Review of giving short shrift to woman authors. Here, that alleged lack of respect—and to call a book “chick nonfiction” is to call it unserious—extends not only to the woman who is the author but also to the woman who is the subject. The book documents the First Marriage, with an emphasis on the first lady and how she was able to influence White House policy. “The story of the book is of people who had equal power in a marriage and one giving up the power,” said Rebecca Traister, a writer for Salon, in an interview with Tablet Magazine. And even less-positive reviewers—including Brinkley—acknowledge that no book about this marriage can be entirely free of political content. 
 
 Jennifer Weiner, a novelist who prominently supported accusations in 2010 that coverage of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom reflected the Times’, and arguably the publishing industry’s, larger bias against woman writers, emailed this morning: “My suspicion is that if a male reporter had written a detailed, well-researched, revealing book about the First Marriage, it would have been praised as a serious work of journalism. However, when the old, pernicious double standards still apply, if it’s a lady doing the investigation, the personal can never be political … it can only be gossip, and the writer, however skilled a reporter, is still merely a chick.” 
 
 Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein wrote, “Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas is among the very best books on this White House. It’s a serious, thoughtful book on the modern presidency in general. So no, I’m not going to call it ‘chick nonfiction.’ ” 
 
 Brinkley has not replied to a request for comment. 
 
 While The Obamas’ primary subject is the marriage itself, Kantor is a White House reporter for the Times, and the book broke several bits of news concerning Michelle Obama’s frustration with a perceived failure to enact her husband’s agenda—particularly with regard to health care and immigration reform—and her indirect conflict with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “Everyone from The Associated Press to POLITICO has focused their stories on the tensions involving Michelle Obama, Gibbs and Emanuel,” reported Politico. 
 
 Kantor declined to comment for this story, and Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Times Book Review, did not reply to a request for comment. As a sometime-contributor there, I would be surprised if the phrase “chick nonfiction” was not flagged by an editor or copy editor, which would mean (although this is only conjecture on my part) that it was then included at Brinkley’s insistence. 
 
 Many reviews have accused the book of various flaws. Though earlier on Kantor interviewed the First Couple, ultimately they did not cooperate with the book, and some have said this refusal significantly hindered what Kantor was able to reveal. Others have alleged errors of fact, although it turns out that many of the allegations were themselves erroneous. Many have said certain conceits, specifically a reconstructed scene featuring Michelle Obama alone, have gone a step too far into the speculative. 
 
 But no review I’ve read went quite so far in questioning the book’s basic seriousness (even while elsewhere appearing to take the book very seriously). In addition to the “chick nonfiction” line, Brinkley refers to Kantor as “a reportorial wunderkind” who had “gumption,” implying that she is green. But Kantor’s reputation as a wunderkind stems from her being named editor of the Times Arts section at the age of 27. Now, 36, she has been a Washington reporter since 2007, and, for example, wrote the paper’s “Man in the News” profile of Obama on the eve of the 2008 convention. 
 
 Traister noted that much of the review was positive, but in a way that makes the allegedly condescending tone of certain parts of it all the more puzzling—and stark. For instance, Brinkley writes of Kantor, “She reconstructs a half-dozen or so strange, gossipy moments that hardly hold up as serious journalism, but provide insight nonetheless.” Said Traister, “It’s the crazy combination of being positive about the material in a professional, serious way, but then just assuming that we don’t take it seriously.” 
 
 Weiner added, “Using a politician’s personal life as the prism through which to view the choices he or she makes has always been the work of reporters and historians and even novelists. Yet I don’t remember the Times calling Joe Klein’s Primary Colors chick lit, or complaining that recent histories about politicians’ personal lives, from Jon Meacham’s Franklin and Winston to Jacob Weisberg’s The Bush Tragedy to Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life, took a tabloid tone.” 
 
 The difference isn’t only that those books were by male authors. It’s that this book is primarily about the president’s wife. 
 
 And not just any wife, as Traister eagerly pointed out. “When you’re talking about [Michelle Obama’s] influence on [President Obama], you’re talking about someone who began as his professional mentor, and was his professional equal,” she said. “This was not true of any other First Lady until Hillary Clinton. You can’t actually draw the historic comparisons without acknowledging that there’s a radically different set of circumstances and context for, for example, her opinions on policy, since she and the president were professional and intellectual equals.” Traister added, “[Michelle Obama] comes at this with a completely different range of opinions, education, and experiences than what you’re going to attribute to Jackie Kennedy or Lady Bird Johnson or Nancy Reagan”—three first ladies to whom Brinkley does compare Obama. “Maybe it’s a critique that Jodi Kantor should have made that a more central theme in the book. But to not acknowledge the fundamental qualities that make it an entirely historic dynamic!” 
 
 Added Traister, “This is not to say someone had to give it a great review. But nothing I read about his review except for the implied femininity of author, subject matter, and lead character actually made it unserious. Because everything about how it was crafted and reported was positive.” 
 
 Indeed. Here are some good things Brinkley had to say: “A few of the anecdotes Kantor includes are riveting;” “Kantor skillfully elucidates;” “the vivid prose stays, at all times, free of snark;” and “The author is pretty much a straight-ahead reporter with an ear attuned to verifiable gossip.” 
 
 Yet in the same paragraph as that last sentence, Brinkley also writes, “On a couple of occasions, the tabloid scent in the book is so strong that one would be forgiven for thinking Kantor writes for Us Weekly, not The Times.” 
 
 The First Marriage [NYT Book Review] ||||| "Call it chick nonfiction, if you will; this book is not about politics, it’s about marriage, or at least one marriage, and a notably successful one at that." —Douglas Brinkley reviewing Jodi Kantor's surprisingly controversial book The Obamas. His vaguely sexist-sounding characterization, in what was otherwise a quite positive review, immediately raised howls (and tweets) of protest. [NYT] ||||| First lady Michelle Obama’s tough personal criticism of her husband and protectiveness of his public image have routinely irritated, and at times outraged, President Obama’s top advisers as they compete with her for influence inside the West Wing, according to a new book. 
 
 The tension provoked Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to offer his resignation after determining the president had decided, with his wife’s prodding, to go for broke on passage of the landmark health care reform law. And it led former press secretary Robert Gibbs to unleash a profanity-filled tirade when he thought, mistakenly, that the first lady had criticized him. 
 
 In “The Obamas,�? New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor describes the first lady as transforming herself from a skeptical Washington outsider, who at first did not want to move into the White House after her husband’s historic victory, into a formidable presence who occasionally bests his staff in policy debates and often makes decisions without regard for political consequences. 
 
 On Friday, White House officials strongly disputed the characterizations made in the 329-page book, which will go on sale next week and was excerpted in Saturday’s New York Times. The Washington Post independently obtained a copy Friday. 
 
 Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said the book reflected Kantor’s “own opinions�? and called it “an overdramatization of old news . . . about a relationship between two people whom the author has not spoken to in years.�? 
 
 Kantor interviewed the Obamas in 2009 for a New York Times magazine cover story about their marriage, but she did not speak to them again for her book, Schultz added. 
 
 “The emotions, thoughts and private moments described in the book, though often seemingly ascribed to the President and First Lady, reflect little more than the author’s own thoughts,�? he said, referring to the anecdotes as “second-hand accounts.�? 
 
 In her end notes, Kantor states that the work is a product of hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 people, including 33 current and former White House officials and cabinet members, friends and relatives, former neighbors, employees and colleagues, as well as the Obamas. Some spoke for attribution, others on the condition of anonymity, Kantor discloses. 
 
 In an interview with Chicago Magazine this month, Kantor said: “I wouldn’t trade that for a quick interview with the president, because I’m not sure he’s at liberty to discuss the real questions I asked in this book. In a way, it goes to Barack Obama’s own predicament as president: He’s such a gifted storyteller. Yet can he really tell his own story anymore?�? 
 
 White House officials had been grumbling about the Kantor book for months, expressing concern that it would dwell on internal conflict and expose rifts between the West Wing and the First Lady’s operation. As with the publication of previous works – most recently a book by Ron Suskind – they complained that their colleagues, especially former colleagues, would air their grievances to a reporter so freely. And they rolled their eyes at what they described as the “pop psychology�? nature of a book billed as an inside look at the Obama marriage. 
 
 Once Kantor’s book became available in recent days, however, several Obama officials played down its impact, saying it appeared to deliver much less controversy than advertised. And as the author began to conduct publicity interviews related to the book, Obama officials scoffed at her claim that she has an “intense relationship�? with the first couple, who did not participate in the work. Kantor earned a reported seven-figure advance for the book. 
 
 “They know exactly who I am. We have an intense relationship,�? Kantor told Chicago Magazine of the Obamas. “They really care about the Times, they read the Times. I’ve seen them at the [White House] Christmas party every year.�? 
 
 The book casts the Obamas as loving partners and parents whose relationship, at times rocky, is tested by Barack’s political ambitions to make grand, sweeping change and Michelle’s skepticism that such change can best be achieved through a career in the messy world of politics. The first lady’s rigid adherence to the larger cause her husband’s presidential campaign aspired to clashed with the more practical political realities and compromises that the presidents advisers, especially Emanuel, urged him to accept in the name of advancing his agenda with smaller-scale successes, according to the book. 
 
 Perhaps the most explosive moment comes during the bare-knuckle fight between the White House and Congress over Obama’s health care reform legislation. During the heat of that tussle, voters in Massachusetts chose Republican Scott Brown to assume the Senate seat vacated by the death of liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy. The result is interpreted as a direct rebuke of Obama’s progressive agenda and deprived the president of a critical Democratic vote in the Senate. 
 
 Kantor writes that the outcome served to propel “the Obamas’ long-standing disagreements about politics, suppressed in the glow of the 2008 victory, back to the fore, vindicating Michelle’s accumulated anxieties and doubts. The health care situation epitomized everything she disliked about politics, everything she had been arguing about with her husband for going on two decades: her skepticism about whether true change could be accomplished through the legislative process, the way serious ideas devolved into craven horse trading, the way you could risk and give so much and end up with nothing.�? 
 
 In the end, “she took the failure much harder than he did,�? Kantor asserts. Michelle’s criticism of the president and his aides angered Emanuel, who thought the White House must “avoid finger-pointing�? to be effective. And when the president elected, in the aftermath of the Brown victory, to again pursue his health care overhaul rather than a scaled-down compromised favored by Emanuel, the chief of staff felt betrayed. 
 
 Obama “once more rejected his chief of staff’s vision of the presidency. . . and instead pursued one more in line with the one he shared with the first lady,�? Kantor writes. 
 
 Eventually, after stories in the press embarrassed the White House by making clear Emanuel was unhappy and casting him the good guy, Emanuel went to Obama and offered to resign, according to Kantor. But Obama declined to accept the resignation. (Emanuel stayed on but later resigned to run for mayor of Chicago, a job he now holds.) 
 
 “What’s being portrayed in this book is just not an accurate reflection of how well the East Wing and West Wing worked together on a regular basis,�? said Camille Johnston, Michelle Obama’s former spokeswoman who has left the White House. “From the first meeting she had with staff during the inauguration, she explicitly said: ‘There’s nothing on my agenda that’s more important than what’s on his. Our job over here is to do everything we can to support them.’�? 
 
 Yet Kantor describes other top aides as being unhappy, including Gibbs, who at one point is said to have erupted in a curse-filled rant after he is told that the first lady was unhappy with his handling of a potentially damaging story (even though he appears to have defused the potential fallout). 
 
 That it turned out the first lady probably had not been critical, according to Kantor’s account, appears to have done little to mitigate Gibbs’s relationship with Michelle Obama. Her repeated missteps on White House protocol, such as taking expensive trips abroad and wearing pricey clothing, forced Gibbs to play an “unenviable role�? as “internal enforcer of the rules of the political world, issuing a steady stream of warnings and nos.�? 
 
 The president “who felt guilty about the sacrifices his wife was making, was unwilling to tell her what she could not do. . . so Gibbs took on the task.�? 
 
 Kantor also tells of sweet moments between the Obamas, who share moments on the dance floor and sit together on the favorite spot at the White House on the Truman Balcony to talk about Obama’s grand plans. 
 
 The pair talked about “their joint idea that the president’s career was not about pursuing day-to-day political victories but the kinds of fundamental changes they had sought since they were young,�? Kantor writes. “This was Michelle’s most profound influence on the Obama presidency: the sense of purpose she shared with her husband, the force of her worldview, her readiness to do what was unpopular and pay political costs.�? 
 
 Staff writer Ned Martel contributed to this report.
– A generally gushing review in the New York Times of a book by its own Washington correspondent hit an Internet landmine when it referred to the book as "chick nonfiction," observes New York Magazine. The reconfiguration of the term "chick lit" was no doubt meant to be witty when Douglas Brinkley discussed Jodi Kantor's bestseller The Obamas, which follows the first couple's relationship in the White House. But bloggers and tweeters are stunned. The label seen as a sexist slight by many comes in the wake of years of criticism of the Times for predominantly reviewing books penned by male authors. "That alleged lack of respect—and to call a book 'chick nonfiction' is to call it unserious—extends not only to the woman who is the author, but also to the woman who is the subject," notes The Scroll, referring to Michelle Obama. When a woman writes even a serious book in Times-land, argues novelist Jennifer Weiner, "it can only be gossip, and the writer, however skilled a reporter, is still merely a chick." A Washington Post blogger took the opportunity to zing the Times. The Obamas is "among the very best books on this White House," notes Ezra Klein. "It’s a serious, thoughtful book on the modern presidency in general. So no, I’m not going to call it ‘chick nonfiction.’” So far no response to request for comment from the Times, notes The Scroll.