A promised land

Barack Obama

Sound recording - 2020

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency, a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Audiobooks
Published
New York : Penguin Random House LLC [2020]
[Ashland, OR] : [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Barack Obama (author)
Edition
Unabridged
Physical Description
28 audio discs (approximately 29 hr.) : CD audio, digital ; 4 3/4 in
ISBN
9780525633716
  • Preface
  • The bet
  • Yes we can
  • Renegade
  • The good fight
  • The world as it is
  • In the barrel
  • On the high wire.
Review by Booklist Review

In his preface, President Obama says he wanted to write a book that covered his political career and his presidency as well as one that might inspire young people to a life of service. He rather ruefully admits he thought the whole thing might take up about 500 pages; this 768-page tome turned out to be only volume one. Putting pen to paper (yes, he composes first drafts on legal pads), the former president writes with an elegant hand, juxtaposing his personal ascendancy against the events of history, along with describing the disruptive populism and the toxicity of racism that sometimes twisted the audacity of hope into a deflating nope. Yes, there is excess. Occasionally it seems as if Obama feels the need to describe every person who worked on his campaign or in his administration. So many of his thoughts need examination, and from so many different angles. He sometimes uses the book to explain to readers what he really meant; his debate comment to Hillary Clinton that she was "likable enough," he claims--a bit unbelievably--was only to indicate scorn for the question. Whatever its small flaws, however, the book does a memorable job of untangling both a president and a presidency. Obama reveals himself in his memories of his young daughters, wistful for the time he knows he's missed with them; in his sadness and embarrassment at his inability to be at his dying mother's bedside because of a campaign; and in the uneasiness he feels when he questions his run for the presidency after only serving two years of his senatorial term. "God, Barack, when is it going to be enough?" Michelle asks. Like the professor he was, Obama tries to get his readers to make connections. For example, he shows clearly how reactions to TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) led to formation of the Tea Party. These efforts to show the consequences--intended and unintended--of his decisions are among the book's most formidable strengths. The volume ends with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which occurred ironically close to the White House Correspondents' Dinner where President Obama mercilessly teased Donald Trump, perhaps precipitating his presidential run. This odd juxtaposition mirrors so many other moments in the book where success spins out in unanticipated ways: darker forces are being released. To be continued.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

In the first volume of his presidential memoirs, Obama shares, in great detail, the story behind his historic run and first term as the first Black president of the United States. Beginning with his early years in Hawaii with his maternal grandparents and mother, Obama gives a glimpse into his inner world and his mind. He recounts the stories behind the headlines of his first presidential campaign, and the challenges, missteps, and successes of his first term. Listeners will learn what he thinks about the people who shaped and inspired him over the years, from his family and close friends, to his advisors, political allies, and adversaries. Obama's narration moves the story along quickly, through various events that marked his first administration: the economic crisis, the passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), Wall Street reform, climate change action, and the killing of Osama bin Laden. His effort to put situations into historical context can sometimes drag down the narrative's momentum. He readily admits, "A more gifted writer could have found a way to tell the same story with greater brevity," but he didn't want to "relegate that background to footnotes or endnotes." Always a master orator, Obama reads his memoir with perfect cadence and intonation and captivates his audience; this skill helps guide listeners through the 29 hours of the audiobook. VERDICT Although it's lengthy, this memoir is a must-have for any collection. Obama successfully carries out the task he set himself for this volume: to "offer readers a sense of what it's like to be the president of the United States."--Gladys Alcedo, Wallingford, CT

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House. In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and "getting loaded," his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. ("As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless," he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama's early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, "By nature I'm a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low." The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race--not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with "potent disruptor" Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic "birther" campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build "a beautiful ballroom" on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then "clawing [his] way back to power." Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama's cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured--surely a topic he'll expand on in the next volume. A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Preface I began writing this book shortly after the end of my presidency--after Michelle and I had boarded Air Force One for the last time and traveled west for a long-deferred break. The mood on the plane was bittersweet. Both of us were drained, physically and emotionally, not only by the labors of the previous eight years but by the unexpected results of an election in which someone diametrically opposed to everything we stood for had been chosen as my successor. Still, having run our leg of the race to completion, we took satisfaction in knowing that we'd done our very best--and that however much I'd fallen short as president, whatever projects I'd hoped but failed to accomplish, the country was in better shape now than it had been when I'd started. For a month, Michelle and I slept late, ate leisurely dinners, went for long walks, swam in the ocean, took stock, replenished our friendship, rediscovered our love, and planned for a less eventful but hopefully no less satisfying second act. And by the time I was ready to get back to work and sat down with a pen and yellow pad (I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness), I had a clear outline of the book in my head. First and foremost, I hoped to give an honest rendering of my time in office--not just a historical record of key events that happened on my watch and important figures with whom I interacted but also an account of some of the political, economic, and cultural crosscurrents that helped determine the challenges my administration faced and the choices my team and I made in response. Where possible, I wanted to offer readers a sense of what it's like to be the president of the United States; I wanted to pull the curtain back a bit and remind people that, for all its power and pomp, the presidency is still just a job and our federal government is a human enterprise like any other, and the men and women who work in the White House experience the same daily mix of satisfaction, disappointment, office friction, screw-ups, and small triumphs as the rest of their fellow citizens. Finally, I wanted to tell a more personal story that might inspire young people considering a life of public service: how my career in politics really started with a search for a place to fit in, a way to explain the different strands of my mixed-up heritage, and how it was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life. I figured I could do all that in maybe five hundred pages. I expected to be done in a year. It's fair to say that the writing process didn't go exactly as I'd planned. Despite my best intentions, the book kept growing in length and scope--the reason why I eventually decided to break it into two volumes. I'm painfully aware that a more gifted writer could have found a way to tell the same story with greater brevity (after all, my home office in the White House sat right next to the Lincoln Bedroom, where a signed copy of the 272-word Gettysburg Address rests beneath a glass case). But each time that I sat down to write--whether it was to describe the early phases of my campaign, or my administration's handling of the financial crisis, or negotiations with the Russians on nuclear arms control, or the forces that led to the Arab Spring--I found my mind resisting a simple linear narrative. Often, I felt obliged to provide context for the decisions I and others had made, and I didn't want to relegate that background to footnotes or endnotes (I hate footnotes and endnotes). I discovered that I couldn't always explain my motivations just by referencing reams of economic data or recalling an exhaustive Oval Office briefing, for they'd been shaped by a conversation I'd had with a stranger on the campaign trail, a visit to a military hospital, or a childhood lesson I'd received years earlier from my mother. Repeatedly my memories would toss up seemingly incidental details (trying to find a discreet location to grab an evening smoke; my staff and I having a laugh while playing cards aboard Air Force One) that captured, in a way the public record never could, my lived experience during the eight years I spent in the White House. Beyond the struggle to put words on a page, what I didn't fully anticipate was the way events would unfold during the three and a half years after that last flight on Air Force One. As I sit here, the country remains in the grips of a global pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis, with more than 178,000 Americans dead, businesses shuttered, and millions of people out of work. Across the nation, people from all walks of life have poured into the streets to protest the deaths of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of the police. Perhaps most troubling of all, our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis--a crisis rooted in a fundamental contest between two opposing visions of what America is and what it should be; a crisis that has left the body politic divided, angry, and mistrustful, and has allowed for an ongoing breach of institutional norms, procedural safeguards, and the adherence to basic facts that both Republicans and Democrats once took for granted. This contest is not new, of course. In many ways, it has defined the American experience. It's embedded in founding documents that could simultaneously proclaim all men equal and yet count a slave as three-fifths of a man. It finds expression in our earliest court opinions, as when the chief justice of the Supreme Court bluntly explains to Native Americans that their tribe's rights to convey property aren't enforceable since the court of the conqueror has no capacity to recognize the just claims of the conquered. It's a contest that's been fought on the fields of Gettysburg and Appomattox but also in the halls of Congress, on a bridge in Selma, across the vineyards of California, and down the streets of New York--a contest fought by soldiers but more often by union organizers, suffragists, Pullman porters, student leaders, waves of immigrants, and LGBTQ activists, armed with nothing more than picket signs, pamphlets, or a pair of marching shoes. At the heart of this long-running battle is a simple question: Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals? If so, do we really believe that our notions of self-government and individual freedom, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, apply to everybody? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not in statute, to reserving those things for a privileged few? I recognize that there are those who believe that it's time to discard the myth--that an examination of America's past and an even cursory glance at today's headlines show that this nation's ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to be complicit in a game that was rigged from the start. And I confess that there have been times during the course of writing this book, as I've reflected on my presidency and all that's happened since, when I've had to ask myself whether I was too tempered in speaking the truth as I saw it, too cautious in either word or deed, convinced as I was that by appealing to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature I stood a greater chance of leading us in the direction of the America we've been promised. I don't know. What I can say for certain is that I'm not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America--not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind. For I'm convinced that the pandemic we're currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can't help but collide. In that world--of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity--we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America--the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice-- to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed. The jury's still out. By the time this first volume is published, a U.S. election will have taken place, and while I believe the stakes could not be higher, I also know that no single election will settle the matter. If I remain hopeful, it's because I've learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation, whose conviction in the equal worth of all people seems to come as second nature, and who insist on making real those principles that their parents and teachers told them were true but perhaps never fully believed themselves. More than anyone, this book is for those young people--an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us. August 2020 Excerpted from A Promised Land by Barack Obama All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.