La Cancellera

"The Chancellor" is both a fascinating political biography and an intimate human story of a total outsider - a trained chemist and researcher, the daughter of a Soviet-controlled Lutheran pastor and a woman in East Germany - who became in the unofficial leader of the West. Renowned political biographer Kati Marton set out to investigate the mystery of how Angela Merkel had managed to overcome all these handicaps and develop such a brilliant political career. And he found the answer in Merkel's political genius: the predisposition to talk to opponents rather than to overcome them, the ability to negotiate, the cunning, the humility to allow others to take the merits for granted made in tandem, the wisdom to stay away from the media and off Twitter and the vision to take advantage of crises to adopt strategic changes.