“David Mendell was on the Obama story long before the rest of the world caught on. This book remains an essential text for understanding President Obama’s formative years.”
—Alec MacGillis, government and politics reporter for ProPublica and author of The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell
“Before Barack Obama was a towering political figure, he was a local pol. This book serves as a corrective to Obama mythmaking on both sides, and it provides an insider’s glimpse at the political origins and stunningly swift rise of Barack Obama.”
—Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed
“Long before Barack Obama made history, he attracted the attention of the gifted journalist David Mendell. His intimate interviews with the rising political star and his brilliant analysis of the movement that formed around him endure as an unparalleled chronicle of the making of an American president.”
—Evan Osnos, winner of the National Book Award for Age of Ambition and staff writer at The New Yorker
“I recommend this wonderful book to anyone who wants to know the real story behind Barack Obama’s historic rise to national political stardom. Having covered Obama since his Senate campaign began, David Mendell offers an insightful, richly detailed, and refreshingly balanced account of a ‘change candidate’ who was neither as perfect or as flawed as others might want you to believe.”
—Clarence Page, 1989 Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune
“Long before Barack Obama was president, David Mendell was there—and we’re lucky he was. In Obama: From Promise to Power, he uses his extraordinary access to Barack and Michelle Obama, their friends, and aides, to deliver an engaging and insightful portrait of one of the most intriguing leaders in modern American history.
—Peter Slevin, author of Michelle Obama: A Life
“This book was required reading for those of us who covered Obama’s 2008 campaign. Two White House terms later, it remains a fascinating and unfiltered read about the remarkable political rise of a major historical figure.”
—John McCormick, Bloomberg national political reporter
“David Mendell got to Barack Obama before most of the rest of the world, telling the story of Obama’s remarkable rise to power with deep reporting and in vivid detail. Obama was perhaps the most unlikely person ever to seek the presidency. Mendell’s fine book provides the historical backdrop for how Obama got to the starting line of that 2008 campaign. The story he tells is as fresh today as it was at the time.”
—Dan Balz, chief correspondent at the Washington Post
“David Mendell’s Obama: From Promise to Power is the single best source of background information on our new president. . . . Covering the 2004 Senate campaign for the Chicago Tribune, Mendell got a good look at Obama before he became the One. In writing the book, Mendell drew mostly on his own firsthand reporting, and other writers have cribbed heavily from him. The book is generally sympathetic to its subject, but is not a hagiography either. It takes note of his faults, as well as the sharp elbows that he has thrown in his rise to the top.”
—John J. Pitney, Jr., Roy P. Crocker Professor of Politics at Claremont McKenna College, National Review
“A look at the man who would be president, written for readers who really want to get to know their president, not just his or her policy inclinations. . . . Every presidential biography of the man will cite Mendell.”
—David M. Shribman, Chicago Tribune
“Since his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama has captured attention as reporters, politicos, and ordinary citizens have wondered if he might be the nation’s first black president. Chicago Tribune reporter Mendell argues that although Obama’s rise to the national stage might seem unplanned, it is the outcome of a carefully calculated strategy by an ambitious man. Mendell tracks Obama’s rise through the frustrations of community organizing and the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics to the rarefied, if no less brutal, world of the U.S. Senate. Mendell draws on interviews with Obama, his wife, family, friends, aides, and rivals, as well as his own extensive coverage since Obama’s days in the Illinois Senate, to offer a nuanced, compelling look at a man of idealism and ambition intent on making history.”
—Booklist (starred review)