Barack Obama, shown at Harvard University in 1992, publishes the first volume of his highly anticipated autobiography just two weeks after the U.S. presidential election. Photo: Apic/Getty Images
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Obama’s Promised Land
/ BY Peter Muggeridge / September 17th, 2020
In the midst of one of the most contentious and divisive election campaigns in American history, former U.S. president Barack Obama announced he has completed the first volume of his much-anticipated memoir, A Promised Land.
The 768-page book, which the publisher Crown (a division of Penguin Random House) describes in a press release as a “deeply personal account” of Obama’s “improbable odyssey” from his birth in Hawaii, his middle-class upbringing and introduction to politics in Chicago, and his historic election in 2008 as America’s first African American president, is due to hit bookshelves on November 17, exactly two weeks after voters choose for either Donald Trump or Obama’s friend and former Vice President Joe Biden as President of the United States.
As well as providing a behind-the-scenes look at his time in the Oval Office, the first volume promises to make readers “privy to his thoughts” as Obama dealt with the financial crisis, fought a war in Afghanistan, shared the world stage with Vladimir Putin and authorized the operation that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
In a statement announcing the details of The Promised Land, Obama said the book will be an “honest accounting” of his time on the world stage and “my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made.”
Obama, 59, who has published two previous books — Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope — expressed relief at completing his memoir. “There’s no feeling like finishing a book,” he said in a statement. “And I’m proud of this one.”