Get the Obama biography

I have been asked by several students if the first volume of Obama's autobiography is worth reading. Yes, buy it, or borrow it if you can.

Reviews that I have seen are in unison that it is brilliantly written. You will be familiar with the author's command of prose if you have read any of his previous books.

For example, Gary Young in the Guardian has said:

'As a work of political literature A Promised Land is impressive. Obama is a gifted writer. He can turn a phrase, tell a story and break down an argument. As he goes down the policy rabbit hole he manages to keep the reader engaged without condescension. The writing can be vivid. Describing a trip to the Great Wall of China, he writes: “The day was cold, the wind cutting, the sun a dim watermark on the gray sky, and no one said much as we trudged up the steep stone ramparts that snaked along the mountain’s spine.” He depicts Hawaii as a place where “slicing through turquoise waves is a birthright”, and the oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig as “roiling plumes [that] looked forceful, menacing, like emanations from hell”.'

Julian Borger in the same paper discusses the fascinating insight what political junkies will want to read about:

'...the decisive moment in Obama’s first term comes in 2010, when his aspirations are hobbled by the Republican capture of the House of Representatives in disastrous midterm elections. It is not just the defeat that takes him by surprise, but the extremes to which GOP leaders are prepared to go, threatening to trigger the first ever US debt default to block his legislation. Obama senses something much uglier than politics as usual, describing “an emotional, almost visceral reaction to my presidency, distinct from any differences in policy or ideology”.'

The Observer, in their book of the week, highlight this:

'At the book’s taut, thrillingly narrated climax, Obama vanquishes two enemies over a single weekend. He sends out a team of commandos to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, while in an after-dinner speech in Washington he ridicules Trump, who was then peddling a calumny that suggested Obama may have been born outside the US, which would have made him ineligible to be president. Triumphal rejoicing over Bin Laden’s corpse is not permitted. Instead Obama, who once exultantly caught and killed a fly during a television interview, ruefully muses that he could summon a sense of common purpose when executing a terrorist but not when passing healthcare reform. He allows himself to enjoy Trump’s writhing discomfort at the dinner, then has to admit that Trump “was a spectacle and that was a form of power”.'

If that doesn't whet your appetite, in an interview as part of the book's launch, he says this:

'You write that for your aides, David Plouffe, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, “the immediate formula for racial progress was simple – we needed to win” in 2008. Given all that we saw this summer, were they – were we – naive in thinking that the act of electing the first Black president might ease America’s racial pain?

Obviously, we have a long way to go on race in this country. You won’t find a quote from me, or my aides, saying that my election would somehow usher in a post-racial society. But I also don’t want to undersell the fact that there is a generation of kids out there who would turn on the TV and see a president who looked like them – with a cabinet and a staff by his side that reflected the fuller palette of our country’s diversity. And, by the way, that didn’t just have an impact on African American kids. It had an impact on white kids, too, who will enter the world knowing it’s not unusual for a person of color to be in a leadership position.

This makes me feel old to say, but the reality is that those kids – kids from every background who grew up when I was president – have already done so much to move our country forward. They’re the ones who took to the streets this summer to lead the fight for racial justice. And now, our roles are reversed: they’re the ones on my television set, inspiring me.'

You can read an extract from the book here.