A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10
I pre-ordered this book on November 20, 2020, a mere two weeks after the presidential election in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. By this time, Trump had already voiced his intentions to fight his damndest to overturn the results of the election. Now, as I’m writing this on January 25th, two months after I actually finished reading the book, power has (not really peacefully) transitioned to a new administration. This memoir was a brief reprieve from the tumultuous hurricane that was the last couple months of Trump’s presidency: from bogus lawsuits to overturn a fair election to a surge in coronavirus cases and 400k deaths to the storming of the Capitol. It also served as a nice mental transition away from Trump and back to a saner period of American modern history — what may seem like eons ago — of 2008 to 2016.
Before I read the book I’d heard from many people, including Obama himself, that he was a very loquacious writer. Let the book speak for itself: it’s over 700 pages and it’s only the first of two volumes, and it goes through almost all of Obama’s first term in office. It starts with a brief introduction of himself and his family, how he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, how he succeeded academically and found his place in the law world in Chicago, how he and Michelle met, and how he transitioned his career into politics. As someone who has never read Obama’s other books, this was a concise little introduction that I appreciated very much. It gave enough background for me to completely understand his worldview and his base motivations, although he does expound on them throughout the book.
I remember listening to a podcast or watching a video where the host interviews Obama, and he says that he wanted this book to really give readers an inside look into what goes through a president’s head as he/she makes decisions that alter the lives of millions not only inside the United States but across the globe. Now, I’m assuming that that’s the goal of pretty much every president who writes a memoir, but I haven’t read any other ones, so I can’t say for sure. Nevertheless, Obama achieves that goal very well (there’s a pattern here.. Obama seems to achieve a lot of the goals he sets…). I especially loved when Obama pointed out specific moments in his Illinois Senate career or his stint as US Senator or during his first couple months in the Oval Office where he noticed specific changes in his perception of politics or realizations that the interior is vastly different from the exterior. They were always framed as moments of growth — I think they could also be framed as essential moments where the veneer of a naive idealistic approach is broken and one begins to approach the job with a hardened pragmatism. Perhaps they are one and the same. He is sure to remind us though, that throughout his presidency, Obama never lost hope in the American people (as an amorphous being). I found it endearing that he forced himself to read letters from constituents just to bring himself down to earth – that making policies that affected millions of people that he might never see in his entire life with a swift stroke of his pen could quickly desensitize him to suffering and injustice.
Since I’m writing this review two months late, I don’t have any specific passages to talk about or reference. Nevertheless, there were a lot of excerpts I loved, and if I ever have the time or motivation, maybe I’ll find them and post them here.
I gave this memoir a 9/10 because the only gripe I had was that Obama seemed almost apologetic at points about his policy. I get that he wanted the book to not be blatantly partisan, but sometimes his justifications for certain policy decisions were too much. A couple justifications got repeated over and over again, albeit in different situations, but repeated nonetheless. But let me be clear, this is an extremely minor gripe. If I gave out half points, I’d rate this a 9.5/10. Bottom line: I really really enjoyed this book, his writing style, and the content, and I’m going to preorder the second volume once it’s released!
Peter's Life 