Schiff, Karenna Gore 1973-

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Schiff, Karenna Gore 1973-

PERSONAL:

Born August 6, 1973, in Nashville, TN; daughter of Al (a politician and former U.S. vice president) and Tipper Gore; married Andrew Schiff (a physician and financial manager), July 12, 1997; children: Wyatt, Anna. Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1995; Columbia University, J.D., 2000.

CAREER:

Worked as a journalist for El Pais, Madrid, Spain, and for Slate.com; served as Youth Outreach Chair, Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000; former attorney, Simpson, Thatcher, & Bartlett. Association to Benefit Children, director of community affairs.

WRITINGS:

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America, Miramax Books/Hyperion (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Harper's Bazaar.

SIDELIGHTS:

Attorney, journalist, and author Karenna Gore Schiff is also a historian and writer whose connection to politics and public service is strongly enhanced by her family name. She is the granddaughter of Albert Gore, Sr., a Tennessee politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives, then the U.S. Senate, for thirty-two years; she is also the daughter of Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and presidential candidate. A gifted athlete and academic known for her participation in her father's presidential bid, Schiff said in a 2006 profile in Vanity Fair that she was at a point in her life when she was trying to identify her own way to take a stand for justice and democratic processes. "I want to make a difference. I want to help people. I want to create something," she told Laura Jacobs in Vanity Fair.

To this end, Schiff's first book, Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America, offers detailed profiles of nine women, some practically unknown in American history, whose lives and actions had a significant effect on the social and political history of the United States. Schiff "wanted to show that courage doesn't have to look like a huge military invasion—it can look like a woman teaching illiterate people to read in a small house in South Carolina, or sitting in a jail cell for standing up for free speech," she remarked in an interview with Debby Waldman in Publishers Weekly.

The subjects of Schiff's collective biography range from Septima Poinsette Clark, the child of a former slave who dedicated herself to education and advocating racial equality; Frances Perkins, the first presidential cabinet member in the United States; Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African-American journalist who exposed horrific racial violence in America and who worked to end lynchings of blacks in America; Alice Hamilton, a physician who fought for industrial safety by pointing out the dangers of industrial poisons and related chemicals; and Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant and fiery crusader for workers' rights in the United States who concentrated on the plight of miners and children forced into lives of hard manual labor.

Booklist reviewer Vanessa Bush called Schiff's book an "inspirational collection of biographies of women of various social, ethnic, and racial backgrounds fighting for social justice." Library Journal critic Donna L. Davey stated that Lighting the Way is "well researched and illustrated," containing "rich portraits that illustrate each woman's impact upon specific conditions of her day." Schiff "has done excellent research," observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer, and "shows her heroines as fully rounded figures."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Biography, spring, 2006, review of Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America, p. 416.

Booklist, December 15, 2005, Vanessa Bush, review of Lighting the Way, p. 16.

Essence, March, 2006, "Words to the Wise: Our Books Editor Goes in Search of Intelligent Signs of Life in the Publishing University and Turns Up Two Winners," review of Lighting the Way, p. 80.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2006, review of Lighting the Way, p. 34.

Library Journal, January 1, 2006, Donna L. Davey, review of Lighting the Way, p. 134.

Publishers Weekly, November 14, 2005, review of Lighting the Way, p. 55; December 12, 2005, Debby Waldman, "Profiles in Courage: Karenna Gore Schiff, Daughter of Former Vice-president Al Gore, Discusses Her Professional Shift from Lawyer to Author," interview with Karenna Gore Schiff, p. 47.

Time, February 13, 2006, Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, "Five Inviting Trips to the Past: The Real Histories behind Monet, Mother Jones, and Tikka Masala," review of Lighting the Way, p. 74.

Vanity Fair, February 2006, Laura Jacobs, "Karenna's World; Karenna Gore Schiff Stepped into the Spotlight with Her Father's 2000 Run for the White House, Making His Campaign Her Cause," profile of Karenna Gore Schiff, p. 140.