Obama: From Promise to Power [Hardcover]

David Mendell (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 14, 2007

The biography of America's hottest political superstar—Barack Obama—from a journalist who has been covering Obama and his career since his successful run for U.S. Senate

Barack Obama's meteoric rise from Hawaii high schooler to exemplary Harvard Law School student to well-groomed politico is the stuff of legend, a political story that has captured the attention of virtually every American. Since his headline-grabbing speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama has come to represent the promise of unity among groups of all types—blacks and whites; Democrats, Republicans, and moderates; the young and the old; the upper, middle, and lower classes. In this first-of-a-kind, groundbreaking biography, veteran journalist and Obama chronicler David Mendell gives an in-depth, comprehensive portrait of the boy named Barry who took inspiration from his hardworking parents and became the eloquent, suave Obama—a man whose last name has become a catchphrase for hope in a politically jaded society desperate for a new star.

Mendell has covered Obama since the beginning of Obama's campaign for the Senate and as a result enjoys far-reaching access to the new senator. His research includes exclusive interviews with Obama's closest aides, mentors, political adversaries, and family—most notably his extremely charismatic wife, Michelle. Mendell reveals the surprising, cutthroat campaign tactics sanctioned by Obama—who has steeped his image and reputation with the ideals of clean politics and good government—to win his Senate seat by employing some of the most ruthless operatives in the business.

Eye-opening, well researched, and compulsively readable, Obama: From Promise to Power is a necessary look at the evolution of a politician from public servant to candidate-savior—a politician who has experienced fame, adulation, and criticism in equal parts and on a greater scale than the public eye has seen in quite some time.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Since his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama has captured attention as reporters, politicos, and ordinary citizens have wondered if he might be the nation's first black president. Chicago Tribune reporter Mendell argues that although Obama's rise to the national stage might seem unplanned, it is the outcome of a carefully calculated strategy by an ambitious man. Mendell chronicles Obama's personal evolution, from Barry, a biracial adolescent growing up in Hawaii, to Barack, the Harvard law school graduate. Obama's complex background—white midwestern mother and Kenyan father—has been both an asset and a liability to his search for acceptance among African Americans and voters in general as they have had to assess who he is and what he stands for. Mendell tracks Obama's rise through the frustrations of community organizing and the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics to the rarefied, if no less brutal, world of the U.S. Senate. Mendell draws on interviews with Obama, his wife, family, friends, aides, and rivals, as well as his own extensive coverage since Obama's days in the Illinois Senate, to offer a nuanced, compelling look at a man of idealism and ambition intent on making history. Bush, Vanessa

Review

The single best source of background information on our new president. (National Review)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Amistad; 1 edition (August 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060858206
• ISBN-13: 978-0060858209
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,475,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 79 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but maybe too objective for some September 7, 2007

By americangadfly

Format:Hardcover

Barack Obama (or "Barry," as David Mendall says he used to be known) is the freshest and most compelling of the new faces contending for the White House. So he's ripe for a good journalistic biography, and this one, the first presumably of many, arrives at a useful time. Mendell's book explores the life of the Senator-candidate-memoirist with greater candor than the man himself can do in his own writing.

It is no criticism of Obama's own accounts of his life to say that they suffer from the limitations that all memoirs do: When the subject of a book is also its author, most matters are written about in a way that is inevitably favorable to the subject-author's own interests. In a memoir, even the admission of mistakes and the confession of failings is inevitably shaped in line with the need for favorable self-portraiture, toward, say, a wish to appear honest and candid.

For the reader, the danger of a memoir written by a sophisticated professional politician like Barack Obama is that you never know when you're being spun and when you aren't. His candidacy is running into the same trap--on the stump he professes to be an outsider, innocent of Washington's games, a position that was taken to task today by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.

Dowd: You may recall her column about Obama that included a memorably cheap shot at his physical appearance. Predictably, this provoked Obama's ire and showed a prickliness that at the time seemed out of place, but which Mendell convincingly portrays in this book as part of his makeup. He really does chafe when someone goes after him, even unfairly. He seems prima-donnaish, thin-skinned. (As two recent reviewers carrying hatchets against Mendel seem not to understand, there are much worse flaws to have.) That personality trait is not to be found in The Audacity of Hope, but it's believably explored in Mendell's book. That's why it's worth reading. The book is written at arm's length, by an author who covered Obama during his campaign for Illinois Senator. He traveled with him, comforted him in tough times (he's not purely objective, but the price of access is always a degree of intimacy), and watched his candidacy emerge. He may be the first journalist to have done so.

Perhaps predictably, two recent reviews here, apparently written by Obama campaign operatives, trash the book and tout The Audacity of Hope as the final word on the man. Folks, a word to the wise: Whenever a serious, substantive book gets trashed with a one-star review on Amazon written by an anonymous reviewer, it's likely the reviewer has some hidden agenda.

What I find after a lifetime of reading history and memoir is that the final word on the man never comes from the man himself. With his book, Mendell establishes himself as the starting point of reference for future study of Obama, should his fortunes proceed to the point where that study becomes worthwhile beyond 2008.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Obama: the dichotomy of idealist and politician, and more February 8, 2008

By S. J. Snyder VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Mendell is a long-time political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, and has been covering Obama since he first ran for the Illinois State Senate. Before I tell you what I cleaned from the book, I'm going to give a quote from Mendell:

"What the public has yet to see clearly is his hidden side: his imperious, mercurial, self-righteous and sometimes prickly nature, each quality exacerbated by the enormous career pressures he has inflicted upon himself. He can be cold and short with reporters who he believes have given him unfair coverage. He is an extraordinarily ambitious, competitive man with ... a career reach that seems to have no bounds. He is, in fact, a many of raw ambition so powerful that even his is still coming to terms with its full force."

Beyond Mendell's observations about Obama itself, are his observations about Obama's luck, for the most part, in two ways: his political timing (except for challenging Bobby Rush) and his political handlers, above all David Axelrod.

Beyond that, here's some specific takes from Mendell:

First, Obama's sometime lack of specificity on policy issues is nothing new.

Second, Obama's attendance at a Chicago antiwar rally, according to Mendell, while it had a degree of idealism behind it, also had a degree of political calculation involved.

Third, Obama did pass some bills in his last term in the Illinois Senate to bolster his U.S. Senate campaign. Specifically, despite his strong stance on gun controls, he sponsored a bill to let retired cops have concealed carry. Why? To get the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, which he did.

Add it all up, and I see a Barack Obama of dichotomy. From his family background, international experiences and more, a person of more idealism than many politicians, even with some tempering. At the same time, as Mendell describes, he's a politician who can fight tough, and will.

The dichotomy? The two sides don't seem to converse with each other a lot, at least in Mendell's observation, which I think exacerbates the thin-skinnedness.

Finally, if you're going to compare Obama to a Kennedy, it's Bobby, not Jack. The image of Bobby's 1968 trip to South Africa turned on the light bulb for me. Same amount of Senate experience at the time of campaigning for president. Same dichotomous mix, or non-mixing, of idealism and bare-knuckle politics. Same drivenness -- Bobby had that same type of charismatic energy in a way Jack didn't.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, Well-Rounded, Highly Recommended January 6, 2008

By Matt Baron

Format:Hardcover

How good was this book? Two nights ago, already one-third the way into it, I hunkered down with this plan: 30 minutes of reading and then get to sleep.

Four hours later, it was 3 a.m., and I'd read more than 200 pages. I finished it up the next day.

In "Obama: From Promise to Power," David Mendell delivers thorough, thoughtful and insightful reporting; detailed, engaging, sometimes-humorous, front-line storytelling; vivid exposition of characters; and a coherent organization that allowed for intermittent interweaving of various individuals and their roles in Obama's life.

Throughout, Mendell effectively captures and conveys the myriad facets of this fascinating public figure.

As a citizen trying to decide whom to support in the coming election, I found this to be illuminating and most helpful in understanding the dynamics of Obama, his supporters and handlers, and the race overall as it progresses.

My high regard for Mendell's work comes largely because I know just how tough his job has been in covering Obama the past five years.

I am a longtime newspaper reporter who has also covered (significantly less notable) public figures, and (much more local) political races. Much of my work has been as a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune, for which Mendell writes and the basis for his interactions with Obama. I should note that I do not personally know Mendell.