Purchase
Simon & Schuster
May 2010
On Sale: May 18, 2010
480 pages
ISBN: 1439101191
EAN: 9781439101193
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
Barack Obama's inauguration as president on January 20,
2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of "Change
We Can Believe In" was immediately tested by the threat of
another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan,
and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as
usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory
of Obama's historic first year in office has until now
remained a mystery. In The Promise: President Obama, Year One,Jonathan Alter,
one of the country's most respected journalists and
historians, uses his unique access to the White House to
produce the first inside look at Obama's difficult
debut.What happened in 2009 inside the Oval Office? What
worked and what failed? What is the president really like on
the job and off-hours, using what his best friend called "a
Rubik's Cube in his brain"? These questions are answered
here for the first time. We see how a surprisingly cunning
Obama took effective charge in Washington several weeks
before his election, made trillion-dollar decisions on the
stimulus and budget before he was inaugurated, engineered
colossally unpopular bailouts of the banking and auto
sectors, and escalated a treacherous war not long after
settling into office. The Promise is a fast-paced and incisive narrative of a
young risk-taking president carving his own path amid
sky-high expectations and surging joblessness. Alter reveals
that it was Obama alone"feeling lucky"who insisted on
pushing major health care reform over the objections of his
vice president and top advisors, including his chief of
staff, Rahm Emanuel, who admitted that "I begged him not to
do this." Alter takes the reader inside the room as Obama
prevents a fistfight involving a congressman, coldly
reprimands the military brass for insubordination, crashes
the key meeting at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference,
and realizes that a Senate candidate's gaffe about baseball
in a Massachusetts special election will dash the big dream
of his first year. In Alter's telling, the real Obama is an authentic,
demanding, unsentimental, and sometimes overconfident
leader. He adapted to the presidency with ease and put more
"points on the board" than he is given credit for, but
neglected to use his leverage over the banks and failed to
connect well with an angry public. We see the famously calm
president cursing leaks, playfully trash-talking his
advisors, and joking about even the most taboo subjects,
still intent on redeeming more of his promise as the
problems mount.This brilliant blend of journalism and
history offers the freshest reporting and most acute
perspective on the biggest story of our time. It will shape
impressions of the Obama presidency and of the man himself
for years to come.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy