A Fighting Chance

An unlikely political star tells the inspiring story of the two-decade journey that taught her how Washington really works and really doesn't. As a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacher, an ambitious goal, given her family's modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished law professor with a deep understanding of why people go bankrupt. Then came the phone call that changed her life: could she come to Washington, D.C., to help advise Congress on rewriting the bankruptcy laws? Thus began an impolite education into the bare-knuckled, often dysfunctional ways of Washington. She fought for better bankruptcy laws for ten years and lost.