Reviews

• A mix of styles

  Very readable, moving from personal reflections, history 101, and in depth policy and political analysis.

• 政治学の必読書です

  オバマ氏は金融危機という異常事態が求めた「ワシントンやロビー活動に染まってない」「政府はこう機能すべきという概念を理解し、未曽有の金融危機を乗り越える若さがある」政治家でした。勿論父親がアフリカ人だったという人種的特徴もあるけど、国民の多くは経済立て直しを期待したと思います。 一方で家事もした普通の父親の面も垣間見られ、等身大の政治家の回顧録になっています。政治はきれいごとばかりじゃないはずだけど、最も国際法や政治理念に忠実な大統領だったんじゃないかと思います。 大学で政治学を履修する人には、是非読んでほしい一冊です。

• 待望のオバマ回顧録

  読書家なオバマ氏の著作だけあって、他の政治家による自伝と比較しても文学的な表現で綴られている。大部な著作であることも相まって、日本人読者にとっては若干ハードルが高いかもしれないが、読む価値はある本である。Kindle 版ならタップすればすぐに字義を確認できるから、物おじせずにぜひチャレンジしてほしい。続編も出る予定だから、総ページ数は全巻で 1,500 ページほどになりそうであるが、読みがいはあるから苦にはならないはず。Audible 版も有名人の著作としては珍しく、全編をオバマ氏本人が読み上げてくれるから、お勧めである。 この回顧録ではオバマ元大統領のどこまでも誠実な人柄と、アメリカにおける党派間対立の激しさがよくわかる。トランプ氏が党派間対立に便乗・利用したのに対し、オバマ氏はひたすら誠実に向き合おうとしていた。オバマ氏は上院議員一期のみ、トランプ氏も国政での経験はほとんどなく、両者ともに既存政治に新たな視点で向き合うことができる立場にあったが、党派間対立への姿勢が対極的なものとなったのは興味深い。 両者の姿勢の違いは演説 (YouTube などで公開されている) に如実に表れているが、オバマ氏は野次馬や反対意見を声高に唱える人々にも誠実に向き合おうとしており、この回顧録でも真摯な姿勢は一貫しているのがわかる。大統領にまでなった人がなぜここまで誠実でいられるのか、不思議に思ってしまうくらいである。だが残念ながらオバマ氏の真摯な姿勢が、政治的に報われることは少なかったのかもしれない。 どれだけ歩み寄ろうとしても耳を貸さない共和党議員も、政治闘争に腐心する民主党議員も、五十歩百歩なのではあるが、パーティザンディバイドの反対側から歩み寄ろうとする議員も確かに存在した。有名なのは一回目の大統領選で争ったジョン・マケイン氏であるが、表立って共和党のパーティーラインから外れた主張をすることができたのは、古参の有力議員であったが故だろう。若手の有望株の中にもオバマ氏の融和的姿勢に理解を示す議員はいたのだが、RINO (Republican in Name Only) と指弾され落選の憂き目をみるなど、深淵のごとく広がる党派間の分断を前にして、志が打ち砕かれていく過程を読むのは辛いものがあった。 "Too cerebral" などと言われたオバマ氏の姿勢が、アンチテーゼとしてのトランプ台頭に繋がった面はあるだろう。トランプ氏はいわゆる「オバマ・ケア」などオバマ氏の遺産を破壊することを至上命題としていた。オバマ氏の誠実さはなかなか報われることがなかったが、１月のバイデン新大統領誕生により、オバマ氏が蒔いた融和への種が芽吹くことを期待したい。 なお元 FLOTUS であるミシェル・オバマ氏の回顧録『Becoming』（www.amazon.co.jp/dp/1524763136/）はベストセラーとなっており、ホワイトハウスでの生活を違う視点から活写していて中々おもしろかった。この回顧録でもミシェル・オバマ氏についてたびたび言及しているが、興味を持ったら彼女の回顧録も読んでみるのもよいだろう。FLOTUS の日常に興味をもつ人だけではなく、BLM を冷ややかな目で見ている人にもぜひ読んで欲しい。元 POTUS バラク・オバマ氏は恐妻家として知られており、著作の売り上げでもすでに白旗を上げているようである。氏の家庭内における地位向上と我々の教養のために、『A Promised Land』もぜひ手に取って読んで欲しい。

• エンチャントメント

  今年の2/16に日本版『約束の地 大統領回顧録Ⅰ』(上下)として刊行 されるのも知らずに背伸びをしすぎて衝動的にジャケット買いしてしまった1冊。 対峙するだけで何かしら気負いというか、緊張感があります。すんなり読めて 解釈できるのがスタンダードなのでしょうね。 （喜ばしいことですが、日本語版も買う破目になりそうです。） 時事的な書籍ですが、オブジェにもなりますしインテリアにもなり、原著でオーラがあり 持ち物ステータスを満たしてくれる存在でもあります。700超と分厚くて唐突ですが『江藤淳は甦える』 クラスのサイズになって個人的には難易度も易しく無く敷居が高くなっており、ニュアンスが分からず 雰囲気だけ理解する形になってしまいますが、日本版を待ち切れずにトライしたい一般の方は本物に 触れる機会ですので是非の希望のある一冊となっております。

• if you were USA president..,

  Precise events and sentiments are well described in detail.

• アメリカ合衆国大統領とは？

  メディアなどからの情報に基づいて自分が作り上げていたオバマ元大統領のイメージより、いい意味で違った印象を受ける書作です。日本人にとってはわかり難い大統領指名選挙や大統領選の流れなども概略つかめる内容です。今回は日本語版と英語版の両方を購入しました。日本語版の訳出で違和感のある表現部分は英語版の方で確認する様しています。お勧めだと思います。

• A promised land

  I found it very educating and easy to understand. A contrast to the image of USA created by former US president Mr. D. trump.

• 聞きやすい、興味深い、考えさせられる、止められない久々のAudibleタイトル

  車通勤のお供にAudible版を購入。著者オバマ氏自身のナレーションです。 「知的で飾らない文章」に触れたかったら、迷わず手に取りましょう。自分のストーリーを語るスタイルを学びたかったら、迷わず聴きましょう。 まだ全部を聴き通してはいませんが、疲れることなく空き時間を使って聴いております。まず、ナレーションが素晴らしい。そもそも彼の演説を聴くことが一つの得難い体験なのですから。この本は、どんな名優に頼めたとしても他の人に朗読させてはだめだし、他の人が朗読する理由がありません。彼自身が文章に込めた感情やニュアンス、ユーモアがとても大事であり、だから聴いているのが楽しい。拾い読みでよい方、逆に一字一句深く吟味したい方は、印刷本が（も）必要としても、私はAudible版での体験をおすすめします。日本のAudibleの無料体験の対象になっているのかはわかりませんが、有料であってもお得です。29時間10分は惜しくありません。 文章のリズムが良くて非ネイティブにも聞きやすい一方、率直で飾らない、きちんと事実を見つめた、情景の浮かんでくるジャーナリスティックな趣もある内容です。なぜ自分がそう動いたか丁寧に説明しているので、政治小説のようなスピード感を求める方にはちょっと冗長に感じられるかもしれませんが、あの時代（第一期）の、アメリカの政治状況やアメリカを中心とした国際政治の貴重な記録です。対外的にはロシア、イラン、中国への言及が目立つように思います。日本は… 友好国だったからいいんですよね、天皇家への観察以外あまり書くことなくても。しかし、これでまだ第一部なのか。後半はより苦悩が滲んでくるかと思いますが、それも今から楽しみにしながら聴き返したいと思います。 政治的に彼と反対の人でも、この人の知性と人格を批判することはなかなかできないでしょう。まっすぐで嘘がなく、謙虚でありながら自信がある。世界唯一の超大国の大統領には、一般人が想像もできない怖ろしいほどの権限と責任がある一方で、独裁システムではない以上、国内政治においてできることに限界もある。高い理念を掲げた人がどこまでできるのかという、政治的な実験であったのかもしれません。そういう理想論で進めたから何も出来なかったんだよ、という反対派の意見もわかります。アメリカ合衆国にとって、国際社会にとって良い政治だったのかどうかは歴史の判断を待ちましょう。その後の逆バネと対比がすごかったから、研究材料としては実に興味深いことでしょう（いやいや、後任さん、任期末期に大自爆ですね）。 出版日直後に「オバマ元大統領が著書で鳩山元首相を批判」とか、例によって「Kindle版を買って検索でキーワード周辺を漁る」の記者が喚いていました。先月のボルトン本でも見られた予想通りのしょうもない反応で論評の価値もありませんが、こんな一言コメント、膨大な本書の中ではカンマみたいなもの。オバマ氏は関わった人格への悪口をこそっと紛れ込ませるような人ではない。もし誰かを非難するなら、その対象者が積み重ねた嘘や罪や不誠実さの事実を冷静に積み上げた上で否定のしようのない告訴状として読者に提示するでしょう。

• In A Promised Land, the first volume of his highly anticipated presidential memoirs, Barack Obama provides a sweeping and vivid portrait of his life leading up to his entry into politics as an Illinois State Senator, and concluding in the midst of the third year of his presidency with Operation Neptune’s Spear, the mission to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. Mercifully, the memoir spends very little time on his early life, a mistake often made by long-winded memoirists who tend to reflect on their early years with something approaching myopic nostalgia. Obama limits the story of his early years to just a few pages, a mere setup to a long-lingering questioning of his early and murky career motives and the true objective of his decisions during that time. He quickly moves to his decision to run for office, first in the Illinois state senate, then rapidly to the U.S. Senate, followed by his run for the presidency. All along the way, he seems surprisingly and somewhat comfortingly irresolute, a shocking admission for a career politician. He also reflects on how Washington changes a person, worrying about being drawn into the muck of politics: "I questioned what might happen to me the longer I stayed in Washington, the more embedded and comfortable I became. I saw now how it could happen—how the incrementalism and decorum, the endless positioning for the next election, and the groupthink of cable news panels all conspired to chip away at your best instincts and wear down your independence, until whatever you once believed was utterly lost." Throughout the book, Barack Obama shows some real insight into his thoughts on partisanship. When reflecting on one of the big scandals of his election run where, in regard to why working class voters tend to elect Republicans, he made the comment, “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” He expresses a deep desire to recant that sentence and replace it with what he claims were his actual convictions as below: "“So it’s not surprising then that they get frustrated,” I would say in my revised version, “and they look to the traditions and way of life that have been constants in their lives, whether it’s their faith, or hunting, or blue-collar work, or more traditional notions of family and community. And when Republicans tell them we Democrats despise these things—or when we give these folks reason to believe that we do—then the best policies in the world don’t matter to them.”" Although this is obviously the rumination of a man who’s had a long opportunity to reflect on his mistakes, this comes across as earnest and believable. Obama’s writing seems to convey a true and pure desire to be a solid and equitable president who brings the country together. Although I had plenty of problems with his decisions and actions while he was president, when he reflects on many of those decisions, his earnestness is unambiguous and authentic, his motives plausibly benign. I voted for Obama in 2008, only the second time I had ever voted for a Democrat for president. (Clinton in 1996 was the first.) I didn’t vote for Obama because of his policies, or because of his messaging, both of which I mostly disagreed with at the time. I also didn’t vote for him because of his charisma or his oratory skills, or because of his message of “Hope.” In fact, I didn’t even vote for him again in 2012, choosing to return to my right-leaning views and vote for Mitt Romney. In 2008, I liked John McCain, and I thought that McCain would make a much better president than Barack Obama. And yet, I voted for Obama for one reason: Sarah Palin. Obama himself shares some interesting insight into the drama within his own campaign on hearing the news that McCain had chosen Palin, starting with Joe Biden turning to him and saying, “Who the hell is Sarah Palin?” After a deep dive by his team into her biography and background, Obama says this: "But from the day McCain chose her and through the heights of Palin-mania, I felt certain the decision would not serve him well. For all of Palin’s performative gifts, a vice president’s most important qualification was the ability, if necessary, to assume the presidency. Given John’s age and history of melanoma, this wasn’t an idle concern. And what became abundantly clear as soon as Sarah Palin stepped into the spotlight was that on just about every subject relevant to governing the country she had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about. The financial system. The Supreme Court. The Russian invasion of Georgia. It didn’t matter what the topic was or what form the question took—the Alaskan governor appeared lost, stringing words together like a kid trying to bluff her way through a test for which she had failed to study." Although this is an easy thing to state after the fact, I have to believe and agree with his assessment. This is after all the primary reason why I chose to vote for the candidate I felt at the time was the worst of the two choices. The book goes through the campaign and the race at a good pace, and he doesn’t dwell for too long on the election itself, getting quickly into the meat of his first year in office and the complex and challenging problems he inherited with a country and a world immersed in a financial crisis not seen since the Great Depression. Although both the House and the Senate were controlled by the Democrats, the Senate’s somewhat recent fixation and enthusiasm for the Filibuster made futile and exasperating his attempts at meaningful legislation. He spends a great deal of time reflecting on the confrontational nature of the Republican caucus toward any legislation put forth by his administration: "You might think that for a political party that had just suffered two cycles of resounding defeat, the GOP strategy of pugnacious, all-out obstruction would carry big risks. And during a time of genuine crisis, it sure wasn’t responsible. But if, like McConnell and Boehner, your primary concern was clawing your way back to power, recent history suggested that such a strategy made sense. For all their talk about wanting politicians to get along, American voters rarely reward the opposition for cooperating with the governing party." He goes into a short history lesson of the failures of both parties to win the house or senate via cooperation with the president through the last twenty years or so, a real but depressing look into how our government actually functions, with bitter infighting and iron-grip partisanship that puts personal power objectives well in front of the good of the country. Although he complains about this on numerous occasions, disappointingly he doesn’t cast blame on his own party for their own commensurate tactics with his Republican predecessors, nor does he offer a mediated solution to such deliberately damaging and abhorrent strategies. Admittedly, such a solution may be non-existent beyond congressional term-limits, which seems to be yet another idea that most Americans desire but will never be realized. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 caused by the sub-prime mortgage bubble was Obama’s immersion in fire, and it was a doozy, a real threat of an global economic depression that consumed the first part of his presidency. To this day, his administration’s handling of that crisis is still fiercely debated but, regardless of choices he could have made differently, there’s no doubt that his decisions did work in the end, and the U.S. banking industry certainly stabilized much quicker than any of its counterparts around the world. Obama certainly spends some time reflecting on what choices he could have made differently, as he states: "For many thoughtful critics, though, the fact that I had engineered a return to pre-crisis normalcy is precisely the problem—a missed opportunity, if not a flat-out betrayal. According to this view, the financial crisis offered me a once-in-a-generation chance to reset the standards for normalcy, remaking not just the financial system but the American economy overall. If only I had broken up the big banks and sent some white-collar culprits to jail; if only I had put an end to outsized pay packages and Wall Street’s heads-I-win, tails-you-lose culture, then maybe today we’d have a more equitable system that served the interests of working families rather than a handful of billionaires. I understand such frustrations. In many ways, I share them. To this day, I survey reports of America’s escalating inequality, its reduced upward mobility and still-stagnant wages, with all the consequent anger and distortions such trends stir in our democracy, and I wonder whether I should have been bolder in those early months, willing to exact more economic pain in the short term in pursuit of a permanently altered and more just economic order. The thought nags at me. And yet even if it were possible for me to go back in time and get a do-over, I can’t say that I would make different choices." I’m not qualified to judge the choices he made during this crisis—I’ll let the economists do that—but his insight into the thoughts that went behind those decisions is interesting, and his reasoning is certainly compelling. Obama adds just a small amount of humor to the book, such as this statement about German Chancellor, Angela Merkel: "She was famously suspicious of emotional outbursts or overblown rhetoric, and her team would later confess that she’d been initially skeptical of me precisely because of my oratorical skills. I took no offense, figuring that in a German leader, an aversion to possible demagoguery was probably a healthy thing." Obama also does a great job of describing and recognizing the bubble in which the American president sits, and his efforts to expand that bubble, from his visits to military hospitals or his attendance at the solemn return and transfer of American soldiers’ remains in an effort to understand the true cost of war, to his meeting with fifteen top American bankers during the financial crisis in an effort to understand their points of view, to his order to his Chief of Staff, Rahm, to have ten letters a day from citizens, good and bad, sent to him to read and reply to. He discusses his desire to take action on numerous occasions, desire that is tempered by his advisors, all of who’s expertise he respected and heeded. When talking about the Iranian revolts, the “Green Movement” of 2009 that posed one of the most significant challenges to the Islamic Republic in recent history, he stews over the merciless recriminations enacted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Publicly, he gives a series of bland, bureaucratic statements like, “We continue to monitor the entire situation closely,” but privately he balked at such passive action: "As the violence escalated, so did my condemnation. Still, such a passive approach didn’t sit well with me—and not just because I had to listen to Republicans howl that I was coddling a murderous regime. I was learning yet another difficult lesson about the presidency: that my heart was now chained to strategic considerations and tactical analysis, my convictions subject to counterintuitive arguments; that in the most powerful office on earth, I had less freedom to say what I meant and act on what I felt than I’d had as a senator—or as an ordinary citizen disgusted by the sight of a young woman gunned down by her own government." He also talks about the requisite tempering of his own ambitions and expectations with policy: "The presidency changes your time horizons. Rarely do your efforts bear fruit right away; the scale of most problems coming across your desk is too big for that, the factors at play too varied. You learn to measure progress in smaller steps—each of which may take months to accomplish, none of which merit much public notice—and to reconcile yourself to the knowledge that your ultimate goal, if ever achieved, may take a year or two or even a full term to realize. Nowhere is this truer than in the conduct of foreign policy." Although he doesn’t spend much more time on that concept, I can only imagine the frustration that someone with the temperament to run for the office of President of the United States must feel as such chafing and arduous delays. For example, the book ends shortly after the killing of Osama bin Laden, and Obama talks about the intelligence that led to the discovery of OBL’s hideout in Pakistan. That information was brought to him six months before Operation Neptune’s Spear was executed, and it’s hard to imagine learning that information and then compartmentalizing it for six months while it’s confirmed and a mission is drawn up. I have a hard time waiting a week or two for something I’m personally excited about like a vacation or a holiday, and the effort to control a natural impulsiveness to immediately take action regarding something as dramatic as intelligence that might lead to the execution or capture of bin Laden seems Herculean. Some of Obama’s candor and the bluntness with which he approaches his problems come through clearly in the opening of chapter 22: "It’s in the nature of politics, and certainly the presidency, to go through rough patches—times when, because of a boneheaded mistake, an unforeseen circumstance, a sound but unpopular decision, or a failure to communicate, the headlines turn sour and the public finds you wanting. Usually this lasts for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, before the press loses interest in smacking you around, either because you fixed the problem, or you expressed contrition, or you chalked up a win, or something deemed more important pushes you off the front page. If the rough patch lasts long enough though, you may find yourself in a dreaded situation in which problems compound, then congeal into a broader narrative about you and your presidency. The negative stories don’t let up, which leads to a drop in your popularity. Your political adversaries, smelling blood in the water, go after you harder, and allies aren’t as quick to defend you. The press starts digging for additional problems in your administration, to confirm the impression that you’re in political trouble. Until—like the daredevils and fools of old at Niagara Falls—you find yourself trapped in the proverbial barrel, tumbling through the crashing waters, bruised and disoriented, no longer sure which way is up, powerless to arrest your descent, waiting to hit bottom and hoping, without evidence, that you’ll survive the impact. For most of my second year in office, we were in the barrel." Obama’s team decides to arrest this descent into oblivion by pushing for Wall Street reform, culminating in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, legislation that should have been completely bi-partisan, but because of what Obama claims was Republican obstinance toward anything he supported, was only able to clear Congress when Mitch McConnell secretly conveyed to him that he would allow the act to barely pass, their obstructionism working well for them and in full force. Once again, Obama takes the opportunity to disparage, or at least to show his frustration with Republicans and their backroom deals and insincere approach to political gamesmanship without acknowledging that this is a massive problem on both sides of the aisle, the muck and the “swamp” that would culminate in the election of Donald Trump eight years later. The book goes through the Deepwater Horizon incident, unrest in the middle east, the Arab Spring uprisings, our military intervention as part of the UN operation against Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, and Obama’s interactions with Russian puppet president Medvedev and his string-puller Putin. All of this is well-written, insightful, and a fascinating look behind the scenes that kept me mostly spellbound. Obama is not shy about self-criticism and acknowledgement of his own failings and errors throughout those early years of his presidency, and the humility is refreshing, gratifying, and relatable. He even reflects on the meaning of any of the choices he might have made with this statement toward the conclusion of the book: "Looking back, I sometimes ponder the age-old question of how much difference the particular characteristics of individual leaders make in the sweep of history—whether those of us who rise to power are mere conduits for the deep, relentless currents of the times or whether we’re at least partly the authors of what’s to come. I wonder whether our insecurities and our hopes, our childhood traumas or memories of unexpected kindness carry as much force as any technological shift or socioeconomic trend." This type of reflection is sporadically inserted throughout the book, the genuine thoughts of a man who had a clear, altruistic vision of what he wanted to accomplish as president. Whether he succeeded with this mission is certainly up for debate, but his motives are unquestionably not. A Promised Land was an enjoyable and enlightening read, and I highly recommend it. Although I was disappointed that it ended prior to what I feel was one of the biggest failures of his administration—Benghazi—I certainly understand the desire to end the book on a high note with the killing of Osama bin Laden. I’m eagerly looking forward to a similar level of authenticity and verisimilitude in volume two, hopefully sometime in the near future!

• It took me over two years to finish reading this book , obviously not in one go but in two times ,I downloaded it straight away when was published and after reading approximately hundred pages I just put it down and not because English wasn't my mother tongue but because I found it a bit boring and not gossip juicy but two or three weeks ago I started reading it again and this time somehow it started growing in me and I started to appreciate Barack writing that is brutally good with a very rich colourful vocabulary and remembering until the last tiny memory of his life as president and before,the thing I liked the most about the book is all the anecdotes he tells about his meetings with another world leaders,so anyway I recommend this book to everyone that have the slightest interest in Barack or politics and of course to everyone that's learning English and want to do improve their overall English reading skills.A last thing I'd like to point out is that for all those Spanish people that buy the book expecting to read about Obama relationship with Spain or our Prime Minister you will be very disappointed because the word Spain is only mentioned once in over 700 pages and was just to list a bunch of countries.

• An expectedly well-written, thoughtful and compelling account of Obama’s inspirational rise to America’s highest political office followed by his hectic, crisis-ridden first term in office. Obama is an eloquent and gifted writer, who not only understands the underlying power of well-crafted language and rhetoric, but utilises this extraordinary talent of his in a way that depicts his inner struggles, feelings and contradictions in a colourful and truly evocative way. The book offers a thrilling literary journey into the vast machinery of US decision-making and the complexities encountered in the course of navigating through multiple domestic and international crises simultaneously. When it comes to substance, A Promised Land offers a detailed, personal account of Obama’s political formation, his experience as a student and an activist, and the gradual emergence of his liberal, idealistic worldview. It is, at times, a truly intimate account of the political rollercoaster that defined the era of his first term. The book itself is structured into separate parts that cover major themes: the first part of the volume focuses on Obama’s journey to assuming office, whilst the latter part covers the first term of his presidency. The consequential thread of events is covered seamlessly, although at times it feels as if the sheer breadth and enormity of the task the author had embarked upon reduced the allotted time he could spend on certain topics (understandable, given the huge palette of editorial decisions involved in ensuring that the final volume provides a thorough and engaging account of all keys events). Personally, the parts I enjoyed the most were those devoted to: Obama’s upbringing; his personal history; and, then, the detailed account of his administration’s foreign policy decisions. It was truly insightful to step into the mind of the man who had to contemplate the most serious and consequential of decisions, and to read through his personal assessments of diplomatic negotiations as well as America’s complex role in today’s increasingly multipolar world. Most importantly, Obama’s personal account of his time in office offers a reminder that decency, integrity and respect CAN be part of modern political discourse. No matter his pitfalls, shortcomings and failures as president, his leadership skills and ethical standards show that a leader’s most important skill today is to fully comprehend the sheer gravity of his actions and the far-reaching consequences of his decisions.

• I'm not from the US so it would be hard for me to properly rate Obama as a president. However I'm an avid reader so I will say that this memoir is probably the best written POTUS memoir I've ever read. It mainly covers (most of) his first term in office, as well as his initial campaigns (for his nomination and then the presidential race). I appreciate him casting some light on his thought process for his decisions on some of the international issues, and I also appreciate him acknowledging that at times he was uncertain, or that he made mistakes. The tidbits about the internal quabbles and tit-for-tat in politics were also very interesting. But what I appreciate most is that throughout the book he focused a lot on the support he received of his wife and family, friends, colleagues and staff, illustrating well how even being the president is far from being a one-man show.

• In this powerful book, Obama shares his passionate journey to become the first black president of the United States, a milestone in American history. Surely, this a fascinating, deeply personal account of history in the making. From his earliest political aspiration in Illinois to Iowa caucus and finally the victory of presidential election, we can see his strength and resilience under pressure and how he handled complex situations and at the same time kept his mind and conscience on high standards. He describes what is to be the commander in chief and manage huge financial crisis, Influenza outbreak, massive oil leaking, the Arab Spring, two wars and a stormy political scenario. He bring us inside the Oval Office and to uncountable tough meetings he had to manage as if we were right there, inside his mind. Through his intimate and introspective writing he detailed how he and his team build the Affordable Care Act, Recovery Act, DREAM, and other crucial advances in American politics. This a highly recommended book.

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