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Obama: The Call of History
by Peter Baker
320 pages
New York Times/Callaway
Release Date: June 27, 2017

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The Obama presidency has been over for less than a year, so it will be many years (and probably a decade or more) before a truly definitive, authoritative account of Obama’s life – and presidency – is published.

Nevertheless, there are several biographies of Obama (some comprehensive, some more focused) already on the bookshelves. Peter Baker’s self-described “authoritative history of the Obama presidency” was published just months after Obama left office and has been widely described as a “coffee-table” book replete with brilliant photographs.

But no critic has described it as a definitive (or, as self-described, “authoritative”) history of the Obama White House. Baker is White House correspondent for The New York Times and is the author of “Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House” which was published in 2013.

Third-party reviews and links:

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From the publisher:

“Nominated for a 2017 NAACP Image Award: Best Biography or Memoir

Peter Baker’s authoritative history of the Obama presidency is the first complete account that will stand the test of time. Baker takes the measure of Obama’s achievements and disappointments in office and brings into focus the real legacy of the man who, as he described himself, “doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills.”

With vivid color photographs by New York Times photographers and others of the events, major and minor, public and behind-the scenes, that defined Barack Obama’s eight years in office, Obama: The Call of History is a portrait in full of America’s first African-American president against the background of these tumultuous times.“

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