Kamala's Path: An American Life

An indispensable book for anyone curious about the woman next to Joe Biden

Revealing biography of the first black female vice president, who, as the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California, grew up to be one of the most important politicians in the United States.

Kamala Harris’s life story is hardly traditional, but she represents the best of America. She grew up the eldest daughter of a single mother, a down-to-earth cancer specialist who had emigrated to the U.S. from India at 19 to get a solid education. She and her husband, a talented economist from Jamaica, separated when Kamala was just five.

The Kamala Harris we know today is a tough, smart, sharp, and demanding woman. She spent years as a prosecutor—her one-liners are legendary—but even in her own memoirs she is reticent about her personal life. Fortunately, Dan Morain, the veteran reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has followed her career closely from the beginning.

In Kamala's Path, he chronicles her career from her early days as a prosecutor in Alameda County, handling child abuse cases and murders—a time when, at the age of 29, she had a life-changing affair with the most powerful man in California, California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Morain takes the reader back to Harris's years as a San Francisco district attorney, describes her audacious approach to the then-relatively unknown Barack Obama, and reveals how she used her elbows to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. He analyzes her failed bid for president and how she then mounted a behind-the-scenes campaign to secure the position of vice president. In his story, he paints a vivid picture of her beliefs and priorities, the people she surrounds herself with and the kinds of problems she is uniquely equipped to solve, as well as the mistakes she made, the risks she took and the daring she did to reach the top.