What is President Obama Reading?

According to the New York Times, President Obama is heartily sick of dense briefing books.  While filled with facts and figures that demand solutions, required  presidential reading does not fire up the imagination.  Joseph O'Neill remedied all that with a ready to go book.  Netherland: A Novel is what Obama reads in his new Treaty Room office digs inside the private residence.

It is a meaty novel from an Irish author who explores the complexities of diversity in an immigrants traumatic life who shares his thoughts with some one so unlike himself that shares the immigrant experience.  Layered atop that is a touch of tilting at cricket windmills as the protagonist rebounds from the bumps in his life journey.  Book sales for the award winning book ought to jump significantly with the Obama acknowledgment.  Not sure yet of Obama will give books an Oprah-like swarm affect. The book is older than the Obama puppy by about 6 months.  In the past year several awards accrued to Netherland.

Not exactly sure where the book Hugo Chavez gave him falls in the line up.  One thing is clear, President Obama would have to get an English version if he was so inclined.

Other nonfiction books by Pultizer Prize Winner Steven Coll and Fareed Zakaria's latest, The Post-American World, have been seen in Obama's hands.  Click here for books that shaped Barack Obama's youthful thinking while living the life that led to his own Grammy-winning memoir, Dreams from My Father.

President Obama Signs Another Book Deal

A book deal received the President-elect's signature to do a modified version of Dreams From My Father for the young adult (YA) audience, making that best-selling memoir a franchise itself. Now that Barack Obama is the official 44th Commander-in-Chief, disclosures show that one nonfiction written work is also optioned for his post-presidency. That won't be discussed until near the end and the big green numbers for that book are going to be stratospheric no matter where he lands in the pantheon of presidential rankings. Bill Clinton can hug that $15 million he got for My Life as the record for just a bit longer. It will be interesting to see what Michelle's memoirs and her fashion creds bring in a stripped down, hand me down publishing market.

The craft of writing is masterful from a keyboard or pen wielded by President Obama, that is a bonus. The presidential memoirs touted most as literary works were from a dying and broke Ulysses S Grant who passed away just days after retiring his pen on the project. President Theodore Roosevelt was no slouch in the writing department either. Ronald Reagan wrote charming letters. One of the most unpopular presidents ever is doing his obligatory writing trying to explain some of his inexplicable decision-making. But had he had the gift of time, Abraham Lincoln may have gone down in history as the writer to which all aspire.

Last year's wheelbarrels full of dollars, just from books, for the First Family was a backbreaking $2.5 million. Yesterday, during President Obama's California town hall in one of the wealthiest counties in America, Orange County, he confessed to the fact that he would be raising taxes on himself as he was now part of the welthy class. Interesting for a community organizer guy who had holes in the soles of his shoes from all the walking during the campaign. Reading his take on life in the White House will be at a premium because he is seeing it through such a different lens with a background unlike any of his predecessors.

Ted Kennedy His Life in New Books

Senator Edward Kennedy is a prolific author and writer in his own right.  He wrote a children's book about
his two Portuguese Water dogs, Splash .  His life encompasses everything from cheating on a Spanish test getting him ejected from Harvard to the shameful Chappaquiddick to rising to become a gifted orator worthy of being the everyman Cicero from Massachusetts to the People's Champion on Labor, Health Care and Human Rights as well as passing the Camelot mantle to President Obama. Ted Kennedy comes form a richly storied and well chronicled family with an interesting take as the youngest son.  It occurs to me that, at times, he must have felt a bit like Ron Weasley minus the carrot top. 

At the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy had had enough of their domineering mother and told Ted to go "call your mother and our sisters." Ted was the only Kennedy who seemed to relish his mother's daily notes about his grammar and appearance. He stopped being the baby of the family only when fate intervened. In the span of less than five years, Ted went from being the "other Kennedy" to being heir to the political legacy of his slain brothers, surrogate father to their children and head of the entire Kennedy clan.

Now his twilight years are upon us as he fights a malignant brain tumor, a number of people, including the remaining scribes at the Boston Globe, are writing their version of his story, Last Lion:  The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.  Lisa Tucker McElroy's version, Ted Kennedy:  A Remarkable Life in the Senate,  is due out in April of 2009.I would love to see in the fullness of time what Caroline Kennedy would state for the record.  

Michelle Obama's Brother Pens New Book

In the age of books, where publishers fully own archaic business models, hot properties still motivate them to enter the 21st century.  Anything Obama is a big seller.  Look at the shelf of books devoted to Michelle Obama with her presidential husband making a best seller of anything with his name on it.  Now her Princeton alumn brother, former investment banker and Oregon State University head basketball coach, Craig Robinson has inked a deal to author a book way early in an Obama presidency, A Game of Character.  Is he going to get to do sequels too as long as the O brand remains durable?

"I've been privileged to know some extraordinary people in my life," Craig Robinson, whose "A Game of Character" will be published next year, said in a statement issued Thursday. "I've watched as my sister Michelle, a rock of a mother, became a leader in her own right. My brother-in law, President Barack Obama, who I knew from the first time I met him had something special, continues to inspire all of us."

Well, we alesady know the off cited story about Michelle insisting Barack play basketball with her brother because he would not be able to hide his true character from a top Ivy league player.  Its sort of a a combo Luke Skywalker meets Clark Kent mid-dunk with Michelle awaiting the ref's whistle to go ahead.  It worked out, but that's only worth a chapter, at its boring best.  What else will be in the book we wonder. A book that might be more interesting to me because her background is not as well known is Commander in Chief Obama's PhD sister, Maya Soetero-Ng with her Indonesian & American heritage and integration into a Chinese family. 

Jimmy Carter's Latest Book on the Middle East

The day after the federal holiday dedicated to a presidential inauguration, Commander in Chief issue #39, Jimmy Carter, will sign his latest treatise, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work, on the Middle East at the Carter Center or rather the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum. The book's release date is no mere accident with its symbolism cresting over due to the current bloody events and human carnage currently exploding in the Holy Land of the three major faiths.

The latest Nobel Peace Prize winning presidential author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid upset many sensitive to criticism as it bored into the issues stopping the creation of a contiguous two state solution with more of a Palestinian point of view. For my money, it is a great book with the maps showing the intractable issues that lead to such horrific warfare. Israel is pounding the living daylights out of Gaza after flinging leaflets from on high to the People of Palestine that terrible is yet to come. Israel has a need for self protection from a small slice of militants confines to Gaza. Middle East expert, James Earl Carter, Jr., defines a way forward against the conventional wisdom bombs that have marked the path for the last decade. Since Carter is not known for tact, his choice of remedies ought to cause even more lively discussions once people read the new book.

Books About Michelle Obama

From everywhere the Obama books are rushing off the presses and onto brightly lit display tables in brick stores and featured as blinking commodities on the click sites. Michelle is in for the Full Monty Obama treatment of being stripped down and taken apart like a classic Model T. For two years, she campaigned, cajoled new voters and chalked up countless air miles all across the US & its territories to make her hubby, America's El Jefe. She of the legal mind, community organizing and social impact world is now a cross between Jackie O with the Martha Washington newbiness of being the Black First "Mrs. That One" with a dash of a heart warming Oprah thrown in to offset her Harriet Tubman laser focus. What makes her tick and tic (her kid's privacy) is explored in the newly released, Michelle: A biography by Liza Mundy. That book jacket photo - it's destroying Michelle's nascent iconic fashion creds. Yikes.

Mundy, a Washington Post Magazine reporter, is sympathetic to the next first lady but does not gush. We get the facts in this unauthorized biography, but we also get context.

We get a pretty good idea of what kind of person the next first lady is, and we get it without the portentous tone of a formal, big-foot biographer. Which is fine, since we're in a hurry, anyway. This book is a quick read, in the style of a long magazine piece so well-written that you barely notice the length as you sprint toward the end.

Mundy also is lucky in her "girl-friendy" subject, as the author calls her. Michelle Obama, no shrinking violet she, fairly leaps from the page. She is warm, funny, smart, passionate, conflicted, irrepressible, grounded, organized, maternal, authoritative, spicy, authentic and normal. (COOL Image from Paris Match)

However America chooses to purchase their latest intelligence about the new First Lady, it is selling. Elizabeth Lightfoot has her just 72 hours old book (12/11) offering with Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope. Then, David Bergen Brophy presents Michelle Obama: Meet the First Lady is a book version for the Malia aged crowd. With corset held breaths, the fashion world is waiting to see who the designer du jour will be based on her choice for the 44th president's inaugural. The designs from some of America's best have been viewed over 4,000,000 times on WWD.

Happy Birthday Rhonda!

Battle of the Lady Memoirs: Bush vs Palin

Publishers are going gaga over an opportunity to bid over two republican ladies' memoirs. Laura Bush is loads more popular than the guy with whom she shares a bedroom and a reporter-nipping toy terrier. For 70 days ad 70 nights, Sarah Palin's Fey fame on the media tilt-o-whirl leads to more chugging of moose chili and chips with Alaska's First Dude. Both have some scorching tales to pen (Where does a ghost writer apply?), if they write from the heart for history. Not happening (fully). One may need to protect a shattered brittle legacy and the other, the family empire of built on politics. The whole phoenix effect and how each overcomes the fishbowl environment could be fascinating as long as its not all leaked first. Then again, Laura Bush only suffered through six state dinners in the whole eight years.

Sally McDonough, Mrs. Bush’s spokeswoman, said yesterday that she “has expres sed interest in writing a book after she leaves” the White House and is pursuing the prospect but would not comment as to whether or not the first lady has actually met with any publishers. The AP, however, reports that, “Laura Bush wants to write a memoir and will be meeting with several publishers, according to three publishing executives with knowledge of the proceedings. They asked not to be identified, saying discussions are in the early stages and highly confidential.”

Will Laura Bush rate an equivalent $8 million advance that her predecessor received for her book, Living History. Laura's got a new house to furnish and her husband has been told to wait awhile to let his activities marinate to a more pleasant smell. Sarah, at 44, will be able to talk about being a grandma before Mrs. Bush. Mrs. Bush can talk about public teen age rebellion times two and being a mother of the bride who's dad was head of state. Truthfully, the promise of the books may be worth more than the actual first editions if they focus their memoirs on pablum and bromides.

Ladies, start your publishing engines....because when Michelle Obama even hints at a book it will garner Rowling like numbers.

Obama Supporter Warren Buffett Sells Books

Warren Buffett gave one lone business analyst turned biographer unfettered to study him like a fully feathered $62 billion pheasant under glass.  Buffet is a cottage industry in books as his ideas and advice are sought from the world's elites.  He made all of his files, business contacts and private thoughts transparent before each secret and pearl of Buffet wisdom transformed into the written word.  Years passed as the author, Alice Shroeder, slogged through meetings, listened in as he advised and followed the gold brick labyrinth that is the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. The book is The Snowball:  Warren Buffet and the Business of Life.  Interestingly, she left off the name most know him by, The Oracle of Omaha while following his dictum that if another version of a story about him put him in a more unflattering position, use that one.  She did.

This son of a hardcore republican business man became a leading liberal philanthropist with a rapier mind geared towards business and presidential politics.  Being flush with cold hard cash during the economic times, WB, poured at least 8 billion dollars into the US stock market with Goldman Sachs being the beneficiary of at least 5 billion bucks.  On the political front as the premier honcho on business, he squarely came down in supporting future president Barack Obama.  Yesterday, the 78 years young political insider did a fundraiser for Barack Obama in California's chic Century City for the still well-heeled. His advice is straightforward.

Mr Buffett wrote: "A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

Warren Buffett was at the California Woman's Conference with 14,000 attendees.  In a moment of irony, Buffet was on an all guy panel with Chris Matthews between Buffet the Obama supporter and the McCain supporting governor and husband of the conference organizer, Maria Shriver.  All three have known problems with relating to females.  Michelle Obama was a great hit last year in the hall, but no one knew as California was in the midst of its worst firestorm.

John McCain Was A POW - Who Knew?

These heady campaign days, John McCain answers any potentially critical, embarrassing or unflattering inquiry with same answer. He was kept for five and a half years as an American prisoner of war in what was called the Hanoi Hilton. It answers why he's clueless about how many houses he has, why he picked the beauty queen gov as his running mate, why he offered his current wife up as Ms. Buffalo Chips in South Dakota at a hardcore biker nudity rally and informs his faith as stated after he was removed from Rick Warren's faith-based Cone of Silence. I mean, exactly how many times do you use it verbally to the lazy press, who at least know that already (it didn't involve the hard work of an investigation) when he's written and had it written about extensively. Good gracious! McPOW even said it on the Tonight show when Jay Leno offered him a million bucks to come up with the answer how many houses he owns. Then, it came up again when it was pointed out about the number of homeless veterans made worse by the odious Bush adventures in presidenting. Next week, it will be repeated over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, that John McCain was a POW, leaving him remote and an untouchable in his own rendering of a George Washington like apotheosis. Seriously, can he just repeat it once more for clarity, John McCain was a POW.

John McCain has his name as author on at least five books. One was actually really ghostwritten good entitled Faith of My Fathers and yep, being a P.O.W. is mentioned in a more honorable fashion there too. Another is the seminal book by Robert Timberg, The Nightengale's Song, that just lays out 5 naval academy grads histories with a discerning eye towards truthtelling humbled by the personal and the bedeviling of their individual experiences. But then Robert Timberg decided to write about it again and again and again because we so didn't understand John McCain was a POW.

But now, he was a POW is the ready republican whine to every little criticism, its getting forty years old as an excuse for bad behavior, rotten decisions and his snappishness. His 72nd birthday was yesterday along with the 3rd anniversary of this nation's worst disaster, Katrina, where he was slurping frosting from his fingers celebrating with the Pretender-in-Chief while others drowned. Now he is having ANOTHER republican celebration as New Orleans prepares to go down for the second time as Gustav homes in on the Gulf Coast. Of course we know the answer when asked what would he do differently, for goodness sakes, didn't you know he was a POW...

Peeping Bob Woodward, Behind the Bush Curtain, Again

DC Bubble wrapped Bob Woodward is not in any danger of giving heavyweight author Robert Caro a run for his money on well written presidential biographies. The only thing they have in common is a years long fixation on a president each chose to chronicle. Woodward does his from a self serving political infotainment insider Bush perspective while Caro strives for the true LBJ essence with a million word army of fab footnotes in an investigative fashion smarmy Woodward gave up hope on achieving. Woodward's "Bush Period", started with fawning to oops, public opinion is changing sharply negative - must change my take in the last one for continued long term stay on bestseller list.

President Bush's detestable presidency will receive its fourth Friday the 13th treatment next month in The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 a $21.12 book Woodward penned while protecting his ongoing access to Bush cronies, especially inside the Dick's Vice presidential suite. Woodward famously withheld information pertinent to America's security so his third sequel would not be compromised at the bookstores. It landed the journalistic ethically challenged Bob as a witness at the trial for convicted, then partially pardoned felon and vapid author Irving "Scooter" Libby, the shoot em in the face Veepsters piece-of-crap chief of staff.

Now Bob's unleashing on America his latest purported sussed out findings from the King Iraq Surge Sockpuppet, General David Petraeus with inside details on the callowness of the Bush administration and the access the general enjoyed as part of their seven year coup. His books have a breathless Marilyn Monroe tone as real life characters speak in hushed tones as if Woodward was right in the room at the time, his trademark. The fact that Woodward is/was a highranking executive at the Washington Post at the time he wrote his last book, knew Bush felons were lying, withheld info during the federal investigation while prattling on to Larry King and other DC outlets that there was no outing while sticking up for the Bush/Cheney clan, never made him think ethically or critically about the inconsistencies of what he was saying, doing and writing. Once an intrepid reporter who doggedly pursued the details of Watergate, he has gone on to hack for the Bush administration making money off of book
deals when concurrently deciding which reporters covered what for his newspaper. How Washington. And that's exactly the lens through which his work should be judged on September 8th even as much as his information exposes the question will always be what did he leave out and why.

Corsi - Portait of A Smear Merchant Sleaze Addict

On the matriculation front, Harvard has to figure out how to get the rogue scalawag alumns from tainting other fine scholars that normally emanate from its august environs. Imagine having to own up to a screw loose author preening from his crap-filled primordial ooze about his second dull Lizzie Borden candidate ode plus a historian-authenticated worst.president.ever as two Harvard slimy examples of being able to graduate, but wholesale incapable of Grace. Harvard's pig pen dwellers, Corsi & Bush, used their faux conservative alligator arms to throw mud that lacked consistency of facts or merit at another Harvard legal scholar running for president, Barack Obama. Bush tried and failed rhetorical sophistry in the Knesset while Corsi tried and failed as sleaze peddling author to portray Barack & Michelle Obama as equals in rightwing political squalor.

The gobbledygook served up for the huddled lemmings yearning to read stood on its tippy toes, whined for a twisted fact or two to aid it in making the cut into a (non)fiction remainder bin came from the robust personage with slim pickings in the small copy and paste mind of Jerome R. Corsi. Harvard granted him a PhD in Political Science. He used the discredited intelligent design science version. Barack Obama's campaign wasted 40 pages refuting Corsi's cartoonish, poorly-sourced blasphemy on truth, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. I shall ignite but three paragraphs on a jowly auteur unfit to aspire to be the dingleberry on the backend of a leftover ampersand. Waldman already kicked and pinched both sets of Corsi's clinched cheeks on LKL.

Corsi is addicted to political spotlights fads of which, he is perennially the old style dunnyman, happily carrying the flaming refuse of George Bush's & John McCain's Republican Party. He claims he is an independent. Corsi opened his poison inkwell, dipped in his shriveled quill and penned a 'book' used by his BFF AWOL George Bush to defeat a real war hero, John Kerry, in 2004. This year, following his flirtation with the Minuteman and all their racial drama, he was unable to stop himself from swallowing the most scurrilous crud to fashion another book in an attempt to lend credibility to his faded literary pretensions. Less than three years ago, Corsi, The Commode Dipstick Specialist First Class, tried to bamboozle people on the idea that there was not a looming peak oil issue in a 'book'. This publisher, Threshold Press, is trying to stay sewer level as Jerome Corsi sprays golden showers on all their behalve$.

Senator Barack Obama defines his plans in the foreword of Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise,to be released in paperback September 9th. His staff pulls together the policy details of what an Obama Administration will do in remaining chapters.

Swimming in Lincoln Books

Soon there will be some sort of list made into a book of the Top 1000 Lincoln Books of All Time with just the early years. Abraham Lincoln is one of the most written about people in American literary history. Honest Abe is some sort of keyboard catnip to historians, civil war buffs and general readers that compels aficionados to add to the collection of material, now probably comprising its own Lincolnesque vault in the Library of Congress.

Not even sure needing to write about Lincoln is treatable with a four score plan after folks pour years into buffing and polishing their works on everything from his migraines to his now publishing acceptable BFF, Frederick Douglass. See, even I am doing it here. The recent rediscovery of Frederick Douglass and his interaction with Lincoln is in time for a bicentennial that may herald a new presidency born of all that came after the Dred Scott decision. Senator Obama is aiming to be the third memorable Illinois connected politician to reside at the White House. Barack Obama shares much in common with Lincoln & Douglass.

There are many a book on Lincoln that are worth the time and expense. It doesn't mean everybody that writes about Lincoln gains entry into some mythical pantheon with verbal roses and golden pens strewn before them. Some of the best books in recent years about Lincoln are Doris Kearns Goodwin's take in Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln or David Herbert Donald's Lincoln. It would take years to write about the numerous and ponderous odes that have totally butchered Lincoln's biography for their own ends. Frankly, who wants to give more PR to the at best mediocre Lincolnphiles. Those who are without willpower or writing skill should review Douglass's words first.