Book 59 - A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Reading date - January 2021

My feelings about Obama are clear to all who know me. I do not believe he is the saviour simply because he is not a white man.  He gave direct command for a lot more action than the orange wotsit after him, this does not mean that I rate either man highly or above the other.  They are both the same but when it comes to bombing and killing little brown kids, Obama is worse.  A lot of people seem to forget this and are so hung up on the fact that because he is an ethnic minority in power, he must be doing only good.  This isn't case at all, look at the Uncle Toms we have in the govt here over the past few years, Warsi, Sunak, Javid and Patel do not speak for me as a brown person and they don't speak for any of the brown people I know.  I know I have mixed up two points there but whatever.  Just cos they are in positions of power as brown folk, it doesn't mean they will be an ally.  Look at all the Windrush deportations going on.

This book is bulky and full of some dry sections but I feel if you're wanting to read a book about politicians, you have to be ready to accept that it isn't going to be sexy all the time.  This is the first in his presidential memoirs, he has written books before this, one of which I have.  I got that from the book sellers under the bridge on the Southbank (something I am really, really missing at the moment as everything has been shut for what feels like a million years).

The book starts with his presidential campaign kicking off and goes through how tough it was for him to spend so much time away from his family and how hard it was to function on the road..which is just what I wanted to read.  I want to read real accounts of what is going on, not something made up and glossy.  The book goes through him speaking with people at grass-roots levels and finding out what he could do for the people.  

It progresses through his many campaigns and then the win.  There are chapters on his failures and his successes and the book finishes with the capture of OBL.  It finishes in a perfect place as the real meat of his presidency is about to kick off.  I can't wait to read the next book.  This book was also on BBC Sounds and was narrated by the Big Dog himself so I listened after I read.  The audio version is abridged but it does have most of the substance there.

There is mention of his wife and kids in this too, showing that he does balance both sides of his life, which is to be expected as a lot of people do that, despite not being leaders of the free world.

Don't be confused, this is by no means an impartial book about the man, it is heavily in his favour but I understand that reading a memoir you're going to get a favourable view of the person as they are writing about themselves.  It's very vain in places but what do you expect? You're not going to write a book about yourself where you keep being down about yourself, are you?