Published: November 17, 2020
Author: Barack Obama
Genre: Biographies & Memoir, Political Memoir, Leaders & Notable People, US Presidents
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Summary:
The memoir starts with Obama's childhood, goes through his first campaigns, and covers the majority of his first term as President, all while remaining focused on Obama's political career. The events leading up to Osama bin Laden's assassination in May 2011 are detailed in the book, culminating in a meeting between Obama and the Navy SEALs who carried out the raid. The first 200 pages or so of the book are devoted to Obama's life and career up to and including his time in Chicago, while the book remains primarily about politics.
College
Obama admitted that when he was in college in the 1980s, he used to read Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and Herbert Marcuse in order to impress potential love interests. "It's embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual curiosity paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know those first two years of college," Obama said. "My pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless as a strategy for picking up girls," Obama said of his college reading.
Politicians
Obama paints a positive picture of many of the staffers and other politicians he meets throughout his early life and presidency. Obama's "affection for his first-term inner circle" was "moving," according to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her New York Times review, and he "makes heroes of people" in his descriptions of others. In the memoir, Claire McCaskill is praised for "voting her conscience" on the Dream Act, and Tim Geithner is praised for his handling of the 2008 financial crisis.
Obama also criticizes other world leaders, claiming, for example, that Vladimir Putin's "satirical image of masculine vigor" is the result of "the fastidiousness of a teenager on Instagram." "The easy confidence of someone who'd never been pressed too hard by life," Obama says of British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Nobel Prize
Some critics remarked on Obama's reaction to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, writing in the book that his simple response was "for what?" Obama elaborated when he arrived in Oslo for the Nobel Prize ceremony: "It seemed illogical to believe that I, or anyone else, could bring order to such disorder... On some level, the crowds below were cheering an illusion." Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Eli Stokols both called the reaction "incredulous" in their reviews. Following an early morning phone call, Obama informed Michelle Obama of the news, to which she replied, "that's wonderful honey," before returning to sleep.
In analyzing the response, Adichie observed that Obama "considers his public image overinflated; he pushes pins into his own hype balloons."
United Nations
Obama writes in his book, "During the Cold War, the chances of reaching an agreement were slim, which is why the UN stood by as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary and US planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside. Even after the Cold War ended, divisions in the Security Council hampered the UN's ability to solve problems. Its members lacked the financial and political resources to rebuild failing states like Somalia or prevent ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka."
Rating: 100/100
Recommended: 100/100 YES.
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