A review by bunceyyy
A Promised Land by Barack Obama

2.0

Despite managing to make me weep in its last pages (DC I miss you baby), largely I would exercise caution when deciding to read this book. Not least because it calls for an encyclopaedic knowledge of world history, a photographic memory for acronyms and names, and an in-depth understanding of American politics (I don’t even understand British politics, all I know is that nothing is working and we’re all fucked; it sounds about the same over there), but mainly because it ruined my view of Obama as a modest, amusing, and pragmatic politician. The man that emerges from these seven hundred pages of PR-heavy excuses and borderline fanatical worship of a country with more issues than Vogue, is one who somehow still believes that America is an exceptional, well-functioning, first-world country that indiscriminately offers everyone the chance to achieve any kind of “dream”. One star because I doubt I’d do a better job as POTUS, and the other star for Michelle’s one-liners.