The book is an easy read and contains a number of insights — though it’s still a quickie book.

Osnos’s concise biography treads back along the trail of horrendous tragedies, dashed hopes and dramatic implosions that preceded Biden’s improbable third run at the presidency, and gives at least some clues to the kind of leader he will become if he wins.

... it’s refreshing—even cleansing—to be here again, to read an admiring biography about a normal politician. Of course it is dull too.

There’s something deeper going on here. It seems that many liberal journalists in America no longer see it as their duty to ask tough questions, if there’s any chance of them rebounding to Trump’s benefit. They believe too much is at stake. Perhaps they are right, but it doesn’t make for compelling journalism. In this case, the result is 190 pages of eloquent and well-informed puffery that effectively doubles up as a campaign advert..

The book is strongest on Biden’s relationship with Obama, where the author draws on interviews he conducted with both men when they were in the White House.

Osnos presents Joe Biden as someone whose career has been a basic story of a different kind – grounded in shared suffering and commiseration with others, not inflated by preordained conceit.

This is certainly not a definitive biography of Biden. It could hardly be, coming in at under two hundred pages. Yet in a relatively few chapters, ho[m]ing in on a few key periods in Biden’s life, Osnos has presented us with significant insights into the life of a singular man who has been in national public life for over forty-seven years. In trying to present the long political life of Biden to a present-day audience, Osnos has succeeded admirably in showing us both his political and personal strengths and weaknesses.

Osnos, who has been writing about Biden for years for The New Yorker, believes he could be more radical in office than people who have tracked his career might believe.

... a breezy account of Joe Biden’s life and politics.

[A] concise narrative that hits the highlights of Biden’s public service career and lands lightly on private touchstones, such as the family tragedies that comprise a large part of his biography.

The author clearly admires his subject, though he oddly begins his account of the man who would be the oldest president in U.S. history with the aneurysm Biden suffered in 1988.

Journalist Osnos (Age of Ambition) draws on vivid reportage from his New Yorker profiles of Biden to paint him as an unprepossessing but effective politician who is good at connecting with voters and wrangling with congressional leaders and foreign potentates.