Obama’s Story, Written by Obama

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Long Run
Obama’s Story, Written by Obama
By JANNY SCOTT
Published: May 18, 2008

The Long Run
A Writer’s Touch
This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.


(Allen Brisson-Smith/NYT)
Senator Barack Obama at a book signing in 2006.

....Senator Obama understands as well as any politician the power of a well-told story. He has risen in politics less on his track record than on his telling of his life story — a tale he has packaged into two hugely successful books that have helped make him a mega-best-selling, two-time Grammy-winning millionaire front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination at age 46. According to his publisher, there are more than three million copies of his books in print — and two more books on the way.

The story of Mr. Obama’s life as an author tells as much about him as some of the stories he has recounted in his books. It possesses at times the same charmed quality sometimes ascribed to his political ascent — an impression of ease, if not exactly effortlessness, that obscures a more complex amalgam of drive, ambition, timing and the ability to recognize an opportunity and to do what it takes to seize it.

Just as he was eager to promote his first book to (Hermene) Hartman, he has made the most of his second. When his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention sent his memoir soaring out of obscurity and straight onto the best-seller list, he untethered himself from his longtime literary agent in favor of Robert B. Barnett, the Washington lawyer who had gotten Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton an $8 million book advance and then landed Mr. Obama a $1.9 million, three-book deal.

He finished his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” 18 months into his first term in the Senate, edited the proofs late at night on a Congressional fact-finding trip to Africa, plunged into campaigning for colleagues in the midterm elections, took time out for a 12-city book tour, appeared on programs like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Charlie Rose,” then announced four months later that he was running for president.

The books have defined Mr. Obama’s public image in a way that few books by politicians have done. Reporters paw through them for insights into Mr. Obama the candidate, supplied by Mr. Obama the author. Out of his story, he has also drawn the central promise of his campaign: if a biracial son of a Kenyan and a Kansan could reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable in himself, a divided country could do the same....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/politics/18memoirs.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

[Hekate]

1. Kick

:hi:

:kick:

[midnight]

2. In our home we have one of his books. The audacity of hope.

I was cleaning out the bookcase and started skimming the pages. I was saddened to read that his mother committed suicide. I will have to read the book for more insight to this family crisis, but was shocked by this.