Review: A Promised Land

A Promised Land by Barack Obama
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: The first hand account of Obama's first term as President and the path to it.

I was trying out audible and was wondering which audio book to try and it just made sense to go with Oscar winning Barack Obama narrating his own memoir of his first term of Presidency and the run up to it. The Five stars aren't for Obama and what he has done as President but purely for the memoir and how it has been structured and narrated. The man really knows the power of communication and leverages it to make for a very engaging and witty long hear. Whilst it is chronological and a lot of facts, he is able to add emotion, drama without being over the top making you feel you are sitting right there with him in Air Force One or the Oval Office dealing with one disaster to another facepalming one moment or giggling the next.

He clearly mentions how if the problems he was being asked to solve had a precedent, was black or white or had a rule book, some one in the chain of command would have already solved it leading him to deal with probabilities and varying shades of grey. His attention to detail, background to certain conversations, the political climate - overall a well rounded insight into the world of one of the most powerful positions in the world. He makes all those names you read in the newspapers along the political landscape human, adds flesh and character to each of them as they deal with bad news which clearly doesn't follow a cycle and the balancing act of managing political capital.

I probably would have read the book faster than hearing it which is one of the drawbacks of audiobooks but I think this particular book deserves a listen rather than a read purely because of Obama.

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