![]() ![]() Obama spoke about the experience of writing his new book and the formative role that reading has played, since his teenage years, in shaping his thinking, his views on politics and history, and his own writing. In a phone conversation last week (a kind of bookend to an interview I did with him during his last week in the White House in January 2017), Mr. Obama’s own storytelling powers and to his belief that, in these divided times, “storytelling and literature are more important than ever,” adding that “we need to explain to each other who we are and where we’re going.” And much like the way that earlier book turned the story of its author’s coming-of-age into an expansive meditation on race and identity, so “ A Promised Land” uses his improbable journey - from outsider to the White House and the first two years of his presidency - as a prism by which to explore some of the dynamics of change and renewal that have informed two and a half centuries of American history. ![]() But the volume is also an introspective self-portrait, set down in the same fluent, fleet-footed prose that made his 1995 book “ Dreams From My Father” such a haunting family memoir. Yes, it provides a historical account of his time in office and explicates the policy objectives of his administration, from health care to economic recovery to climate change. Barack Obama’s new memoir “ A Promised Land” is unlike any other presidential autobiography from the past - or, likely, future. ![]()
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