A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy. In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

So I’ve been wanting to read this book ever since it first came out in late 2020. But after reading it I just don’t understand why it won the  “Best Memoir & Autobiography” category on Goodreads in 2020. Because its very far from being a good book. But let me explain by this.

Majority of this book feels like a personal therapy session rather than a biography about 44th president of USA. And there are a lot of times it feels like Barack Obama is trying to defend himself from the people who don’t like him or his presidency. At the same time there were many times I got the feeling that Barack Obama tries to glorify himself and make you think that during his political career he never did anything wrong at all.

This book feels like a very broad and shallow chronological timeline of Obama’s political career, from his start in community organizer to him becoming president and ordering the killing / capture of Osama bin Laden. 

If you have seen at least one speech from Barack Obama you would have notices that his speeches are filled with inspiration, hope or motivation. But this book is written by the same guy but this doesn’t feel like it. Because were is the inspiration, hope or motivation in it?

At the same time Barack Obama is very reserved and way too kind to himself in this book which really made me have the impression that he is way too full of himself. Even thou I like Barack Obama and think that he was the best president since JFK.

Of course there are some good parts about this book, like it having the occasional acknowledgement of moments or situation that the press didn’t captured or report on but should which proved that he was better president than people on the right give him the credit for. And this book has few interesting anecdotes which really made me learn something more about Barack Obama and which I found to be very interring and fun to read about. But those moments were very rare and I personally wish that we had gotten more of them.

This book has over 700 pages (which depends on the edition of the book you got), and it feels like Barack Obama have written a love letter to himself which turned out to be 750 pages long. Which really made me view him in a different light than I did before reading this book.

There were a lot of moments during reading this book where I found myself bored of it, uninterested and thinking about if I should DNF this book because I was very bored at times.

The edition I got of this book is 752 pages long, and after reading this whole book I think that it should have been shorter and it would only make this book better than it is now. Because as it is now it feels more like a boring text book from high school which everyone hate but which everyone needed to read.

At the same time this book doesn’t talk or even mention about the major events which happened during his presidency but rather this book talks about the insignificant events which no one really cares about. 

Throughout this book keeps mentioning how much it sucks to be president of USA and how hard of a job it is. I personally think that being a president must be a hard job and not just sitting on the couch all day everyday and making some decisions, but Barack Obama signed himself to being possibly a  president when he started his presidential campaign. 

The writing style in this book wasn’t the best. Of course it had some good moments. But for the most part it feels like a writing style worthy of a high school text book rather than a biography book about a president.

I Give This Book 2 / 5