Brothers Emanuel: The Emanuel Siblings' Book PR Blitz

By Amy Cavanaugh in News on Feb 16, 2013 8:00PM

We're well acquainted with Rahm Emanuel here in Chicago, but his brothers, oncologist, bioethicist, and Obama health care advisor Ezekiel and Hollywood agent Ari, the inspiration for Entourage's Ari Gold, aren't exactly unknowns. What makes a family produce three highly successful, if rage-filled individuals? That's the crux of Ezekiel's book, Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family, which comes out March 26.

First up: a Vanity Fair piece entitled Ari, Ezekiel, and Rahm Emanuel’s Upbringing: Their Tight Bond, Childhood Dustups, and Skirmishes with Racist Bullies that includes photographs by Annie Leibovitz. The Washington Post has some highlights from the print story:

• Rahm “always heard from teachers that they expected the same straight-A performance they’d gotten from me,” writes Zeke. “Though fiercely intelligent, especially when it came to sizing people up and assessing a social situation, he was not naturally inclined to sit at a desk and put in extra effort to turn a B into an A.” Their father used to say, “Rahm always tries to get the maximum for the minimum.”

• Ari was adorable, jittery and always an operator: Selling his school lunch dessert, running a lawn-mowing business (friends did the work, he pocketed the profit) and ordering the most expensive items on the menu.

• And Zeke? Something of a jerk when he first arrived at Amherst, he insists: “Not surprisingly, given my family of origin, I began many relationships there with arguments. I considered this perfectly normal. As it turned out, hardly anyone else felt the same way."

Up next: strategic TV appearances and other supersecret interviews. We'll be monitoring this in case any Emanuel gems come to light.