A Promised Land
A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy. In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
11mentions
11people
2020–2026years
9% recommend91% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I enjoyed reading 'A Promised Land' by Barack Obama. Learned so much about American politics and America's international policies. Learned more about life at White House and around DC.
- I think the practical difference is that the rates that publishers charge libraries for ebooks are significantly higher than what either consumers pay for the ebook or what a physical book costs. See https://archive.is/Ha3VQ for one example:
> To illustrate the economics of e-book lending, the N.Y.P.L. sent me its January, 2021, figures for “A Promised Land,” the memoir by Barack Obama that had been published a few months earlier by Penguin Random House. At that point, the library system had purchased three hundred and ten perpetual audiobook licenses at ninety-five dollars each, for a total of $29,450, and had bought six hundred and thirty-nine one- and two-year licenses for the e-book, for a total of $22,512. Taken together, these digital rights cost about as much as three thousand copies of the consumer e-book, which sells for about eighteen dollars per copy. As of August, 2021, the library has spent less than ten thousand dollars on two hundred and twenty-six copies of the hardcover edition, which has a list price of forty-five dollars but sells for $23.23 on Amazon. A few thousand people had checked out digital copies in the book’s first three months, and thousands more were on the waiting list. (Several librarians told me that they monitor hold requests, including for books that have not yet been released, to decide how many licenses to acquire.)
- I wish journalists would explore why the technical methods & information sharing that enable this surveillance are allowed to exist. Highlighting instances of abuse and the quasi-legal nature of the industry doesn’t really get at the interesting part, which is _what motivates our leaders to allow surveillance in the first place_.
I recently completed Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (a partial account of his presidency), and he mentions in his book that although he wanted to reform mass surveillance, it looked a little different once he was actually responsible for people’s safety. I often think about this when I drive past Flock cameras or walk into grocery stores; our leaders seem more enticed by the power of this technology than they are afraid of vague abuses happening in _not here_. It seems like no one sees a cost to just not addressing the issue.
By analogy, I feel that reporting on the dangers of fire isn’t really as effective as reporting on why we don’t have arson laws and fire alarms and social norms that make our society more robust to abuse of a useful capability. People who like cooked food aren’t going to engage with anti-fire positions if they just talk about people occasionally burning each other alive. We need to know more about what can be done to protect the average person from downsides of fire, as well as who is responsible for regulating fire and what their agenda for addressing it is. I’d love to see an article identifying who is responsible for installing these Flock cameras in my area, why they did so, and how we can achieve the positive outcomes desired from them (e.g. find car thieves) without the negatives (profiling, stalking, tracking non-criminals, etc).
- Obama wrote in his book "Promised Land", talking about campaign appearances:
> Once my speech was over and I walked off the stage to shake hands along the rope line, I often found people screaming, pushing, and grabbing. Some would cry or touch my face, and despite my best efforts to discourage it, young parents would pass howling babies across rows of strangers for me to hold. The excitement was fun and at times deeply touching, but it was also a little unnerving. At some basic level people were no longer seeing me, I realized, with all my quirks and shortcomings. Instead, they had taken possession of my likeness and made it a vessel for a million different dreams. I knew a time would come when I would disappoint them, falling short of the image that my campaign and I had helped to construct.
> I realized, too, that if supporters could mold bits and pieces of me into an outsized symbol of hope, then the vague fears of detractors could just as readily congeal into hate.
I guess as a politician, if you can con them good enough, they won't even be disappointed, they'll just start blaming other things when their idol doesn't live up to their expectations. Things like the "Deep State".
- In time, hopefully, we'll have books that explain this charlie foxtrot. There's so much to the story, I can't wrap my head around even the outline. Especially hard because every actor can only tell their own facet, and I'm not smart enough to connect the dots.
Obama promised to end Guantánamo Bay's detentions. I've long wanted to know why that didn't happen. His book Promised Land lists some of the challenges, but left me with more questions. My takeaway is that a cleanup effort that tries to follow the rules is all but impossible when the mess was created by ignoring the rules. In other words, maybe ultimately we have to ignore the rules to cleanup snafus; which is a very scary prospect, right?
The 5-4 podcast, about "why the SCOTUS" sucks", has episodes about the ridiculous, contradictory, nonsensical decisions which ultimately allowed these extra-legal detentions. Stuff like Justices, IIRC, not understanding that their prior decisions to ignore habeas corpus prevented detainees from ever appealing. Real facepalm stuff. If the Justices don't even understand their own snafus, what hope do the rest of us noobs have?
As an American, Guantánamo Bay is just such an embarrassment, fills me with impotence and despair. So big, so ugly, I can barely comprehend it.
- > Obama promised to to stop Guantánamo Bay's detention. I've long wanted to know why that didn't happen. His book Promised Land lists some of the challenges, but left me with more questions. My takeaway is that a cleanup effort that tries to follow the rules is all but impossible when the mess was created by ignoring the rules. In other words, maybe ultimately we have to ignore the rules to cleanup snafus; which is a very scary prospect, right?
Poor excuses. Shut the thing down, free everyone, and give them some sort of compensation in the millions for the horrible conditions they endured. Some of them might end up joining Al Qaeda or whatever, and using that money to fund terrorism, but can anyone really blame them? They were detained illegally and tortured for literally decades. They have every right to be pissed at the US and everything related to them, so if they decide to take it out, it's their prerogative. That's why it was a very stupid idea to begin with.
