1,460 pages.
Audiobook length of over 56 hours.
And all of that is just to cover the time leading up to the Presidency.
“If I go into politics it should grow out of work I’ve done at the local level, not because I’m some media creation.” ~ The young Barack Obama
“If I go into politics it should grow out of work I’ve done at the local level, not because I’m some media creation.”
~ The young Barack Obama
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Jonathan Erdman
Writer. In the summers, I live and work in the incredible state of Alaska, in the bush community of McCarthy, as the Executive Director of the Wrangell Mountain Center. When not in McCarthy, you'll typically find me in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, writing and working with local activists. My primary writing project right now is a novel set in remote bush Alaska, of the magical realism genre wherein an earnest and independent young woman finds a mysterious radio belonging to her grandmother, a device that has paranormal bandwidth and a disturbing ability to mess with one's mental stability.
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Hard to summarize the 1,460 pages, but a point in passing…..From Garrow’s book I took away the idea that Obama was/is a progressive, in his heart and in his head. This is what gets the reactionary conservatives coked up on anxiety, because Obama really does believe that money should be out of politics, that we should have universal healthcare, and that systemic racism does in fact exist, despite the fact that he took massive amounts of dirty money (legal but still dirty, imo, the legally dirty kind), and that he compromised on universal healthcare when he passed his healthcare reform, and that he rarely speaks (in depth) to the problems of systemic racism in his speeches about race. It’s difficult to get a handle on the real Obama. He does in fact, in his heart of hearts, in progressive policies and ideas. Yet when it comes to doing politics, it tends to be Obama’s personality that guides him, and his personality is one that naturally seeks out common ground and consensus. I think that Obama is a little like Lincoln, in terms of how his personality sets the tone for his politics. Hence Obama has made some major compromises and concessions that have baffled progressives….That’s certainly not the whole story on Obama and his politics, there’s also his runaway celebrity…..but I wanted to put that out there….
Great book. I’m a big fan of Garrow.
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