Young Man in a Hurry is a calculated attempt to present its author as having experienced the sort of personal handicaps likely to impress Democratic primary voters in early 2028.
Simply cannot be read for enjoyment ... It is an exhausting hagiography of yet another man who had an affair while in office. It is not so much a book as it is several hundred pages to endure.
Strong ... Also a memoir that feels crafted to pass the beer test, a political thought experiment in which voters are asked which candidate they’d most like to grab a beer with in order to measure likability ... Ordinary details and telling anecdotes combine to form a clearer picture than we’ve had of Newsom’s personal history ... Moving and engaging ... It seems unlikely that readers will change their minds about him at a political level, even as there is much to appreciate—and like—in his personal story.
Tries to recast a life of privilege in often baffling ways ... There’s something sympathetic to work with here. This story could have been more affecting than it is. Instead, we get a book full of slightly lumpy anecdotes.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Young Man in a Hurry is that it never quite answers a basic question: What is the actual raison d’être of Newsom’s political career? ... You close the book with a nagging suspicion that he isn’t entirely persuaded by his own pitch.
We learn little about why Newsom actually wants to be a politician ... The fact his book is so detached from the panic among Democrats that Trump is reading the last rites to American democracy shows Newsom’s optimism ... Newsom has always been in a hurry. But he still doesn’t really know what he is hurrying towards.
Surprisingly pleasurable ... A campaign memoir that campaigns refreshingly little by the standards of the genre ... Trump proved one can get elected without feigning shame of privilege. Newsom doesn’t try to hide it either, making it grist for the storytelling mill.
