A Promised Land
Barack Obama, 2020
Memoir & biography Politics & societyContemporary fiction
The first volume of Obama’s memoir: campaign, crisis, and the inside work of deciding what a president can do.
A page from the book
A portrait of power with no interest in being liked.
Short, owlish, with a smooth Kentucky accent, McConnell seemed an unlikely Republican leader. He showed no aptitude for schmoozing, backslapping, or rousing oratory. As far as anyone could tell, he had no close friends even in his own caucus, nor did he appear to have any strong convictions beyond an almost religious opposition to any version of campaign finance reform. Joe told me of one run-in he’d had on the Senate floor after the Republican leader blocked a bill Joe was sponsoring; when Joe tried to explain the bill’s merits, McConnell raised his hand like a traffic cop and said, “You must be under the mistaken impression that I care.” But what McConnell lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness, and shamelessness- all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power. Barack Obama.Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, less than nine months into his first term.
Books that feel like this
More by Barack Obama
The Audacity of Hope
Barack Obama, 2006
A senator’s account of how American politics works—and might work better—written from inside the campaign trail, the Senate, and the arguments that divide us.
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Questions readers ask
- What is A Promised Land like?
- Feels like hope. About power.
- What should I read after A Promised Land?
- If you liked A Promised Land, try I Am Malala (Malala Yousafzai), Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) and Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson).
A taste of the feed
The kind of power that never gets called power.
Our men think earning money and ordering around others is where power lies. They don’t think power is in the hands of the woman who takes care of everyone all day long, and gives birth to their children.
I Am Malala · Malala Yousafzai
What if the categories we treat as natural were the last thing to arrive?
The host read these words for the audience, and when she finished she turned to the subject of my body, although she did not mention it specifically. But by now I am accustomed to intelligent people asking about the condition of my body without realizing the nature of their request. Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness well up in me. The answer to this question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history.
Between the World and Me · Ta-Nehisi Coates
Why educating a girl changes more than her own life.
Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.
Three Cups of Tea · Greg Mortenson
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