At The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani reports on how reading and writing helped President Obama to “slow down and get perspective” from novelists, memoirists, and historical figures during the eight years of his presidency.
Barack Obama
Posted inEditor's Pick
Obama’s Secret to Surviving the White House Years: Books
A profile of Barack Obama as a reader, which includes a link to Kakutani’s 3,015-word interview with the outgoing president. He discusses his love for reading, some authors he loves–plus short stories he’s written.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Obama’s Aesthetic of Cool
Charles Pierce, writing in Esquire, on President Obama’s Democratic National Convention Speech and uniquely American brand of “cool.”
Posted inUncategorized
[Not single-page] The origins and consequences of the Obama administration’s focus on drone strikes to kill enemy combatants: Of course, the danger of the Lethal Presidency is that the precedent you establish is hardly ever the precedent you think you are establishing, and whenever you seem to be describing a program that is limited and […]
Posted inUncategorized
Excerpt from Maraniss’s new biography of the president. A look at Obama’s early twenties in New York, from the perspective of his girlfriend at the time: Genevieve was out of her mother’s Upper East Side apartment by then. Earlier that spring she had moved and was sharing the top floor of a brownstone at 640 […]