Warren also discusses how, over the decades, big banks and transnational corporations have managed to control almost every corridor of Washington "with armies of lobbyists and lawyers" at their beck and call.

That makes the aw-shucks, I-just-stumbled-into-the-Senate anecdotes that propel her narrative feel inevitably like the savvy (critics would say self-serving) story lines that would play so well at an Elks Club in Iowa.

"[2] Maura J. Casey of The Washington Post observed that "the book's message is that one person can make a difference, but change is painfully slow, uneven and the work of a lifetime.

"[3] A Fighting Chance was also praised by John Cassidy of The New York Review of Books, who remarked, "If Warren has a big idea, this is it: the conception of society as an organic, mutually dependent whole.

[6][7] Conversely, Mary Kissel of The Wall Street Journal was heavily critical of the book, describing it as "the story of how a middle-class girl rose to the Senate—and came to see the market economy that gave her the chance as 'rigged.