In a literary market saturated with books about President Barack Obama—ranging from biographies to hastily written analyses of his term so far—one might think another Obama book would get lost in the fray. Author David Remnick disagrees.

Remnick, editor of The New Yorker since 1998, visited the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St., April 13 to speak about his latest book, “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.” The discussion, which was led by Chicago Tribune literary editor Elizabeth Taylor, allowed audience members to ask Remnick questions. The event mostly focused on the various topics he touched upon in the book and was followed by a book signing.

Remnick said the book took about 14 months to research and write. His work included extensive interviews with Obama, as well as with the president’s family members, friends, mentors, colleagues, supporters and detractors. He referred to the book as a work of “biographical journalism.”

“He’s the president of the United States,” Remnick said. “To pull off this thing, where you understand the president of the United States, while he’s still sitting in the chair, was the challenge for me.”

He said he tried to differentiate “The Bridge” from the plethora of other Obama books on the market by telling a different story than what he had seen thus far.

“I think the main book that I had to be wary of was his autobiography, [‘Dreams from My Father’],” Remnick said. “The autobiography is a very good one, but it leaves out the public life; It’s about the private life. It’s about a young guy becoming himself and figuring himself out. … That’s not what biographers do. They speak to sources, they look at documents, they interview like crazy—that’s not what a young man’s autobiography does.”

In addressing Obama’s public life and career, Remnick spoke about the city of Chicago’s significance to Obama’s background.

“Chicago is, if not everything for Obama, certainly the key arrival spot for him,” Remnick said, noting the city was the starting point for Obama’s political career, when he worked as a community organizer on the South Side.

He mentioned the audience at the event made it easier for him to discuss Obama’s political background because Chicagoans know Chicago politics.

“When you talk to a Chicago audience, you don’t have to explain who Newt Minow or Alice Palmer or Richard Daley are,” Remnick said. “They know it with their fingertips, so it makes things easier.”

Remnick seemed unsurprised when an audience member inevitably asked him to address the controversial New Yorker cover from July 2008, which depicted the president and first lady as militant Muslim extremists in the oval office, burning an American flag beneath a portrait of Osama bin Laden.

“You haven’t lived in this life until you’ve been on CNN and had Wolf Blitzer call you a neo-Nazi,” he said, laughing. He defended the cover illustration as a work of satire targeting the slew of what he considered to be absurd rumors circulating about the president at the time.

Susan Lyons of Chicago said she attended the lecture because she has been a reader of The New Yorker and a fan of Remnick’s work for years. She said she was impressed by his sense of humor and his relaxed personality onstage.

“I thought he was a great speaker,” Lyons said. “I thought he was very articulate.”

However, Lyons did have one problem with the event.

“I didn’t think Elizabeth Taylor was very good at asking questions,” she said, noting that she was more impressed by some of the thought-provoking questions Remnick got from audience members.

Chicago-based illustrator Tom Bachtell, who has contributed cartoons to The New Yorker for the past 20 years, came to the event because he was interested in hearing Remnick’s take on Obama’s life so far. He also said he was impressed by the audience’s interaction with Remnick.

“I thought the audience seemed very engaged,” Bachtell said. “There were a lot of good questions. I liked the way he sort of got a sense that it was a Chicago audience and made reference to that.”

Remnick is well aware that his is not the first Obama book on the market and that it definitely won’t be the last. Still, he takes pride in the fact that he was able to capture such a complete portrait of the first African-American president of the United States years before all of the inevitable retrospective biographies are written.

“I have no doubt and no problem with the fact that that will happen too,” he said. “I’ll be passed in the passing lane at some point, and I get that.”