It’s been four long (very long) years since former President Barack Obama left the White House, and the chaotic administration that succeeded him has made us long for an era marked by dad jokes, cute moments with Former First Lady Michelle Obama, and basic civil rights. As if he could feel the country’s nostalgia for the good ‘ol days amidst the apocalypse that is 2020, Obama is back with another memoir to remind you that things haven’t always been this way — and give us hope for a brighter tomorrow.
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After years of working on the book, A Promised Land is finally set to be released shortly after this year’s presidential election. At almost 800 pages, A Promised Land won’t be a quick read by any means. The upcoming memoir is said to be the first of a two-volume story. Volume one will cover Obama’s long journey to the White House, starting from his early days as an Illinois state senator in the late 90s and ending with his administration facilitating the capture and death of notorious terrorist Osama bin Laden in 2011.
So yeah, it kinda makes sense for the memoir to be longer than a George R. R. Martin book. Obama’s presidency was pretty epic, and we haven’t even gotten to his second term yet.
According to The New York Times, the former POTUS began penning the project shortly after leaving the White House. It’s taken him years to synthesize his path to the highest office in the land, but he did have a lot of ground to cover just in this first volume. There were many highs (like the fact that he was the first Black president in American history and the passing of the Affordable Care Act), but there were also some lows (like his nickname as the “Deporter-in-Chief"), and Obama wanted to touch on them all for A Promised Land.
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“I’ve spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency, and in A Promised Land I’ve tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office,” said Obama in an official statement. “The key events and people who shaped it, my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made, and the political, economic, and cultural forces that my team and I had to confront then — and that as a nation we are grappling with still.”
A Promised Land will be Obama's fourth published book and his second memoir. In 1995, he published his first memoir Dreams From My Father and followed that with the 2006 bestseller The Audacity of Hope. And in 2010, he penned Of Thee I Sing, a children's book about some of the mavericks in American history. The former POTUS also won two Grammys for his audio readings of Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope.
The bar is obviously sky high for Obama's new memoir, but it's not even just because of his own bibliography. His wife's personal memoir Becoming set a new standard for memoirs. Within days of its 2018 release, Becoming broke the record for selling the most copies of any book published in the United States. It was followed by a wildly successful international book tour which later spawned a moving Netflix documentary. Plus, Michelle also has her own Grammy for her audio book version of the memoir. Beat that, Barack — I mean, Mr. President.
Volume one of A Promised Land will be be released on November 17, 2020.