To Obama : People's History

To Obama : People's History
ISBN: 9781408894507
Publication Date: 15 July 2019

One of the most important politics books of the year, To Obama is a record of a time when politics intersected with empathy.

Every day, President Obama received ten thousand letters from ordinary American citizens. Every night, he read ten of them before going to bed.

In To Obama, Jeanne Marie Laskas interviews President Obama, the letter-writers themselves and the White House staff in the Office of Presidential Correspondence who were witness to the millions of pleas, rants, thank-yous and apologies that landed in the mailroom during the Obama years. At once desperate, joyful, hateful and despairing, they form an intimate portrait of one man's relationship with the American people, and of a time when empathy intersected with politics in the White House.

About the Author

Jeanne Marie Laskas is the author of eight books, including the New York Times bestseller Concussion. She is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, a correspondent at GQ and a two-time National Magazine Award finalist. Her stories have also appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and Esquire. She serves as Distinguished Professor of English and founding director of the Center for Creativity at the University of Pittsburgh, and lives on a farm in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.