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A review by bibliorama
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
The audiobook is the way to go for this story since it's narrated by President Obama himself. He brings raw emotion and true reflection to his words. It makes the events of the times more vivid.
I was 9 years old when he was elected to office. All of the events this book talks about happened in the peripheral of my childhood. Being a child, I never realized the shear imact and devastation the financial crisis had on not only America, but the world. The amount of weight that added to his presidency was intense. But I appreciated hearing the amount of detail he gave about the thoughts and feelings from him, his staff, members of congress, the media, and the public. It covered a lot of the opinions of the age. Hearing about how his team handled so many crises made me respect their intellect and attention to detail. They were truly experts in their respective fields and the media coverage during this time really watered that fact down. (I still think it waters it down to this day.) It was wild to see how every crisis bled into each other. There was no room to breathe. Even though this covered 4 years it read like it was only a few months, which I imagine is how it felt to those at the White House. It also made me think about how the presidency is so much of acting on the defensive and dealing with problems that are almost always out of their control, but they're there to do the best that they can. Honestly, it's impressive how much actually got done with everything that was going on. From BP's oil spill, unrest in Egypt and Libya, the financial crisis, Greece's debt that threatened to unravel the EU, the Tea Party, the housing and motor crisis, to Bin Laden. That's a ton and yet congress still got so many other polices done in that first term.
This book gets 5 stars for a few key reasons. First, it's extremely detailed. Obama wasn't known for shirking the details of plans (sometimes to his detriment) and it's no exception here. But, that's exactly what I wanted. Give me all the details, tell me all the major players and their backgrounds, elaborate on the context to every situation. This book delivers on that without being confusing or feeling messy. That leads me to point two. It's extremely well written. Like I said, there's a lot of detail, from names of people to policies, but it never felt overwhelming. Third, it's reflective. He acknowledged where he could have done better and he knows what he got right. It's balanced realism with the ability to hope for a better future. Which in one sentence is how I would describe Obama's mindset.
Lastly it's everything I expected going in, and as usual, President Obama put in the hard work and it paid off.
I was 9 years old when he was elected to office. All of the events this book talks about happened in the peripheral of my childhood. Being a child, I never realized the shear imact and devastation the financial crisis had on not only America, but the world. The amount of weight that added to his presidency was intense. But I appreciated hearing the amount of detail he gave about the thoughts and feelings from him, his staff, members of congress, the media, and the public. It covered a lot of the opinions of the age. Hearing about how his team handled so many crises made me respect their intellect and attention to detail. They were truly experts in their respective fields and the media coverage during this time really watered that fact down. (I still think it waters it down to this day.) It was wild to see how every crisis bled into each other. There was no room to breathe. Even though this covered 4 years it read like it was only a few months, which I imagine is how it felt to those at the White House. It also made me think about how the presidency is so much of acting on the defensive and dealing with problems that are almost always out of their control, but they're there to do the best that they can. Honestly, it's impressive how much actually got done with everything that was going on. From BP's oil spill, unrest in Egypt and Libya, the financial crisis, Greece's debt that threatened to unravel the EU, the Tea Party, the housing and motor crisis, to Bin Laden. That's a ton and yet congress still got so many other polices done in that first term.
This book gets 5 stars for a few key reasons. First, it's extremely detailed. Obama wasn't known for shirking the details of plans (sometimes to his detriment) and it's no exception here. But, that's exactly what I wanted. Give me all the details, tell me all the major players and their backgrounds, elaborate on the context to every situation. This book delivers on that without being confusing or feeling messy. That leads me to point two. It's extremely well written. Like I said, there's a lot of detail, from names of people to policies, but it never felt overwhelming. Third, it's reflective. He acknowledged where he could have done better and he knows what he got right. It's balanced realism with the ability to hope for a better future. Which in one sentence is how I would describe Obama's mindset.
Lastly it's everything I expected going in, and as usual, President Obama put in the hard work and it paid off.