%%id:265%% %%start:review%% ## Review When a president announce that he/she will publish a book, it's always eagerly awaited. And for good reason, having the ability to dive in some of the secret that have gouvernements is exciting. Especialy when it's about the first World power president. Barack Obama is for sure a special president, and this auto-biography remind how special he is. The book is structured in seven parts : - The Bet - Yes We Can - Renegade - The Good Fight - The World As It Is - In The Barrel - On The High Wire It's a big book with 700 pages of small typo reading (in its English version). It took easily 5 months to read it with an average 4 hours/week, but it was worth it! The book is obviously very well written. As a non-native english, it was a bit harder for me to read it, because of the very varied vocabulary and the U.S. slang, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Obama has a very dynamic writing style. He easily oscillates between several kind of emotions and writing tones, from humour, to sadness, passing by the serious tone, nostalgia, yearning... This made the book easier and more interesting to read. I didn't feel lot of length that would urge me to skip some pages or anything like that. If I had to take one thing out of this book, is that it made him appear as a true non-perfect human, with his strengths and weakness, his success and his failures and that's what I really like in this book. We all tend to put on a pedastal people that are high ranked in the society and forgot that they also are humans and to know that even the president of the most powerful country in the world behave like any other human on the planet and is not really different than average people is very refreshing. For me, this book was a lesson on a wide variety of subjects, but not politics. I usualy don't like politics at all, so when I bought the book, I was a little bit worried that it would be a kind of politic manifesto, but it wasn't at all. For sure, he expose his political belief and some subjects are turned like he's the guy who is right and other are wrong, but it's still very light in proportion. It was more a lesson on human behavior, on strategy, on humility, on leadership, on human resources, on entrepreneurship, on data, on love and family relationship and obstinacy. ### The Bet The first part is dedicated to his early life : his birth, his family, mother, father, his early relationship with Michelle, the birth of his daughters, how did he fell in politics, his core values and so on... I liked in this part the way he explain how he gradualy climb the political stairs from the very bottom. How he come into law before starting politics and how he get his first position in Chicago. This part is a kind of birth for every aspect of his life : the birth of his political belief, the birth of his public figure, the birth of his relationship with Michelle, the birth of his life as a father, the birth of his biggest goals and dreams as being a president. This is the part I like in biographies, understanding more about the value and the behavior treats of a person, both his strength and weakness. I like how humble he is and how he construct his ambition through his experience and by listnening both his intuition and his entourage. It's also refreshing to figured out that he's not the most intelligent person in the room (all proportions kept) at all, but clearly one of the most obstinated and informed one. We understand early that he have an awesome listening ability as well as a very great confidence in his deepest values that allows him to gather and synthetize a lot of information to take smart and fast decisions, without sacrifing his beliefs. This chapter (and the book on its whole) is also a great illustration for the proverb "Behind every great man, there's a great woman". It's striking how strong his wife's influence is. The chapter end with the discussion he had with her when he announced that he would run for presidency. When she asked him, very dubious and worried about this not so suddain decision : > You've said there are a lot of other Democrats who are capable of winning an election and being president. You've told me the only reason for you to run is if you could provide something that the others can't. Otherwise, it's not worth it. So my question is why you, Barack? Why do _you_ need to be president? He came with this surprising answer : > There's no guarantee we can pull it off. Here's one thing I know for sure, though, I know that the day I raise my right hand and take the oath to be president of the United States, the world will start looking at America differently. I know that kids all around this country - Black kids, Hispanic kids, kids who don't fit in - they'll see themselves differently, too, their horizons lifted, their possibilities expanded. And that alone... That would be worth it. Inspiring! ### Yes We Can As the name may suggest, this chapter is about his election campaign. %%end:review%% --- _The following was auto-generated by [Books and Binders](Books%20and%20Binders.md) and relates to the copy I own_ ## A Promised Land This book from Barack Obama was edited by Penguin Viking and released 12/2020. I had it for 31.9€ from Fnac. I didn't read the 780 pages yet. ## More on this book : - Buying date : 12/12/2020 - Buying condition : gift - Actual condition : very_good - Book type : physical - Binding : hardcover - Language : English - Category : Politic - ISBN : 9780241491515 - Weight in grams :