Expressing his fascination for India in his latest book 'A Promised Land', Former US President Barack Obama said that he has always held a special place for India due to his childhood years spent in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Obama's memoir, “A Promised Land,” arrives at a moment of deep political, cultural and social unrest — tensions that have been heightened by a global pandemic and an economic crisis. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/from-sonias-beauty-to-manmohans-integrity-heres-what-barack-obama-wrote-on-congress-leaders-342800">Also read | From Sonia's beauty to Manmohan's 'integrity': Here's what Barack Obama wrote on Congress leaders</a>

"Maybe it was because I'd spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, or because of my interest in Eastern religions, or because of a group of Pakistani and Indian college friends who'd taught me to cook dal and keema and turned me on to Bollywood movies," Obama writes.

"Maybe it was its (India's) sheer size, with one-sixth of the world's population, an estimated two thousand distinct ethnic groups, and more than seven hundred languages spoken," Obama said.

Obama says he had never been to India before his Presidential visit in 2010, but the country had "always held a special place in my imagination".

"My book is for those young people -- an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us," Obama said.

In the 768-page first volume of his memoirs, the 44th US president reveals that he writes longhand with a pen on a yellow pad instead of on a computer and confesses to an inability to be concise.

(With inputs from agencies)

Expressing his fascination for India in his latest book 'A Promised Land', Former US President Barack Obama said that he has always held a special place for India due to his childhood years spent in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Expressing his fascination for India in his latest book 'A Promised Land', Former US President Barack Obama said that he has always held a special place for India due to his childhood years spent in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Obama's memoir, “A Promised Land,” arrives at a moment of deep political, cultural and social unrest — tensions that have been heightened by a global pandemic and an economic crisis. Also read | From Sonia's beauty to Manmohan's 'integrity': Here's what Barack Obama wrote on Congress leaders "Maybe it was because I'd spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, or because of my interest in Eastern religions, or because of a group of Pakistani and Indian college friends who'd taught me to cook dal and keema and turned me on to Bollywood movies," Obama writes. "Maybe it was its (India's) sheer size, with one-sixth of the world's population, an estimated two thousand distinct ethnic groups, and more than seven hundred languages spoken," Obama said. Obama says he had never been to India before his Presidential visit in 2010, but the country had "always held a special place in my imagination". "My book is for those young people -- an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us," Obama said. In the 768-page first volume of his memoirs, the 44th US president reveals that he writes longhand with a pen on a yellow pad instead of on a computer and confesses to an inability to be concise. (With inputs from agencies)

Spent childhood listening to Ramayana and Mahabharata: Barack Obama in memoir 

Shortly after President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in the aftermath of a contentious election that cost his party the presidency, he sat down with a yellow notepad and began writing an account of his time in the White House.

Nearly four years later, Obama is preparing to release his book in the wake of another volatile and polarizing presidential race. His memoir, “A Promised Land,” arrives at a moment of deep political, cultural and social unrest — tensions that have been heightened by a global pandemic and an economic crisis.

It’s a challenging environment, to say the least, in which to release a book, even one of the most highly anticipated of the decade. Bookstores have limited their foot traffic to comply with public health measures, and many customers are still wary of in-person shopping. At the same time, supply chains are under intense strain as capacity issues at printing presses have delayed dozens of books this fall.

But in spite of such setbacks, “A Promised Land” is shaping up to be one of the top-selling political memoirs of all time, and a potential lifeline for booksellers whose sales have plummeted during the pandemic.

Crown is printing 3.4 million copies of “A Promised Land” for the U.S. and Canadian market and another 2.5 million for international readers. The book, which runs to 768 pages, is being released simultaneously around the world, and will be available in 19 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Romanian and Chinese (translations into six other languages are still underway). Demand among American customers is so high that Penguin Random House, Crown’s parent company, has printed 1.5 million copies in Germany to bring over on cargo ships.

It still may not be enough to meet demand.

Barnes &amp; Noble is stocking around half a million copies of the book, but the chain expects to sell even more than that, based on the preorders for “A Promised Land” and the strong sales of Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” published two years ago.

“We are taking as many as Penguin Random House will give us,” said James Daunt, chief executive of Barnes &amp; Noble. “If there was an unlimited supply, we would take more. I think we will end up selling an enormous number.”

Big-box stores are also placing large orders. ReaderLink, which supplies books to major chains like Target, Walmart and Costco, expects to receive 890,000 copies by the end of the month, chief executive Dennis E. Abboud said.

For struggling independent stores, Obama’s book — with a $45 list price — could prove crucial in recovering some of the losses suffered during the shutdown.

Kramers, a bookstore in Washington, D.C., is opening its doors for a midnight release Nov. 17, the sort of fanfare more typical for a new Harry Potter book than a political memoir.

Politics and Prose, another D.C.-area independent bookstore, has placed a substantial order, for more than 2,000 copies. Bradley Graham, the store’s co-owner, said the book could have a ripple effect, since shoppers who flock to buy big bestsellers often pick up other titles as well.

“It should make a significant difference in helping to boost sales at a time that we desperately need it,” Graham said.

Even before its release, “A Promised Land” was exerting a strong gravitational pull on the industry. The Booker Prize decided to move its award ceremony, scheduled for Tuesday, to Thursday to avoid overlapping with the publication. (Obama will make an appearance at the Booker Prize online ceremony, alongside novelists Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, where he will talk about what he has taken from reading past Booker-winning novels.)

Readers have been waiting for years for Obama’s account of his time in the White House, which took him around 2 1/2 years longer to write than he anticipated.

“I expected to be done in a year,” Obama writes in his preface. “It’s fair to say that the writing process didn’t go exactly as I’d planned.”

A representative for Obama said the timing of the release was dictated by his writing schedule, which continued into this summer, when the election cycle was already in full swing.

“President Obama was completely focused this fall on helping elect Joe Biden, so there was never a thought given to having it come out in the lead-up to the election,” said Katie Hill, communications director for Obama.

Now, Obama is promoting his book at a tense and delicate political moment, as President-elect Biden seeks to lay the groundwork for his administration while President Donald Trump refuses to accept the results of the election. As a former president who retains high approval ratings with the public, Obama will no doubt be called on in interviews to address the current climate of partisan division, and to deliver his views on how Biden should navigate it. But Obama also wants to avoid stepping into Biden’s spotlight.

“President Obama is very aware, as he will be out there talking about his book, that he’s not the leader of the Democratic Party,” Hill said. “He does not want to be out there in any way overshadowing Joe Biden.”

Of course, the biggest obstacle to any plan in 2020 is the coronavirus. As the virus continued to spread through the summer and early fall, it became clear that Obama would not be able to conduct a book tour with appearances in front of large audiences, like Michelle Obama’s nationwide tour for “Becoming,” which involved events in major sports arenas. Obama isn’t holding any in-person events, except for select interviews. Instead, he will rely on reaching readers through his large social media following — he has more than 125 million Twitter followers, and around 90 million followers on Facebook and Instagram combined — and interviews with traditional outlets like “60 Minutes,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” Oprah Winfrey’s Apple TV show and The Atlantic magazine, as well as on podcasts and youth-focused media outlets. He may also hold some live virtual events, Hill said.

There’s a long literary tradition of former presidents publishing reflections of their time in office, tracing back to works by James Buchanan and Theodore Roosevelt. While some became bestsellers, including George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” and Bill Clinton’s “My Life,” former presidents’ accounts can often be dutiful and plodding marches through recent history.

Expectations are considerably higher for “A Promised Land,” which has been highly anticipated ever since the Obamas jointly signed a record-breaking multibook deal for $65 million with Penguin Random House in 2017. Michelle Obama’s book has sold 14 million copies worldwide, including more than 8 million in the United States and Canada. Barack Obama’s previous books have also been commercial and critical hits. “Dreams From My Father,” originally published in 1995, became a bestseller after Obama rose to political prominence. That memoir has sold more than 3.3 million copies in the United States and Canada, while his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” which was more policy-oriented, has sold nearly 4.3 million copies, according to Crown.

Rachel Klayman, Obama’s longtime editor at Crown, said “A Promised Land” was more challenging for him to write than his previous two books. While he had some assistance with the research, and sought editorial feedback from former members of his administration, he wrote the book himself.

The first time Obama met with Klayman to discuss it, she said, he had several chapters outlined on a yellow legal pad. He planned to begin the book with a scene on the night he won the Iowa Caucus in 2008, a pivotal moment on his path to the White House. When he handed in the first draft, Klayman was surprised to see that he opened instead with a brief scene at the White House’s West Colonnade, and then a flashback to his time as a young adult in Hawaii.

Initially, Obama planned to cover his eight years as president in a single volume, but it became clear as he was writing that such a book would have been too vast and unwieldy. “A Promised Land” covers Obama’s youth and his political awakening, and ends with him meeting the Navy SEAL team involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

“When I read the early chapters, I told him he was a completist, and that would make it hard to bring it in at a reasonable length, and I wasn’t wrong,” said Klayman, who added that she felt the decision to split the book into two volumes enhanced the narrative. “He’s a superb writer, but no one would accuse him of being succinct.”

After Obama finished the book, a handful of trusted readers got early copies, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Wilkerson said Obama’s book was more introspective than a standard political memoir. “I found it to be a balance of grandeur and intimacy,” she said. “He’s very frank.”

Booksellers hope Obama’s candor will draw customers back into their stores.

Lauren Zimmerman, who owns Writer’s Block Bookstore in Winter Park, Florida, said her community, just north of Orlando, is fairly purple politically, and she doesn’t expect many conservatives to buy the book. But she still placed an order for more than 40 copies. For a John Grisham book, she said, the store would normally order about a dozen.

“There are people who don’t necessarily buy books all the time, but they will buy this one,” she said.

There will also likely be customers who want to have the book in their homes as a visible object, even if they read it as an e-book or listen to it as an audiobook — or don’t bother to read it at all.

“I remember when we had our first Catholic president, people had his picture on their wall,” said Kris Kleindienst, a co-owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis. “I feel like for some of our households, this book is that.” 
&nbsp;

Shortly after President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in the aftermath of a contentious election that cost his party the presidency, he sat down with a yellow notepad and began writing an account of his time in the White House.

Shortly after President Barack Obama left office in 2017, in the aftermath of a contentious election that cost his party the presidency, he sat down with a yellow notepad and began writing an account of his time in the White House. Nearly four years later, Obama is preparing to release his book in the wake of another volatile and polarizing presidential race. His memoir, “A Promised Land,” arrives at a moment of deep political, cultural and social unrest — tensions that have been heightened by a global pandemic and an economic crisis. It’s a challenging environment, to say the least, in which to release a book, even one of the most highly anticipated of the decade. Bookstores have limited their foot traffic to comply with public health measures, and many customers are still wary of in-person shopping. At the same time, supply chains are under intense strain as capacity issues at printing presses have delayed dozens of books this fall. But in spite of such setbacks, “A Promised Land” is shaping up to be one of the top-selling political memoirs of all time, and a potential lifeline for booksellers whose sales have plummeted during the pandemic. Crown is printing 3.4 million copies of “A Promised Land” for the U.S. and Canadian market and another 2.5 million for international readers. The book, which runs to 768 pages, is being released simultaneously around the world, and will be available in 19 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Romanian and Chinese (translations into six other languages are still underway). Demand among American customers is so high that Penguin Random House, Crown’s parent company, has printed 1.5 million copies in Germany to bring over on cargo ships. It still may not be enough to meet demand. Barnes & Noble is stocking around half a million copies of the book, but the chain expects to sell even more than that, based on the preorders for “A Promised Land” and the strong sales of Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” published two years ago. “We are taking as many as Penguin Random House will give us,” said James Daunt, chief executive of Barnes & Noble. “If there was an unlimited supply, we would take more. I think we will end up selling an enormous number.” Big-box stores are also placing large orders. ReaderLink, which supplies books to major chains like Target, Walmart and Costco, expects to receive 890,000 copies by the end of the month, chief executive Dennis E. Abboud said. For struggling independent stores, Obama’s book — with a $45 list price — could prove crucial in recovering some of the losses suffered during the shutdown. Kramers, a bookstore in Washington, D.C., is opening its doors for a midnight release Nov. 17, the sort of fanfare more typical for a new Harry Potter book than a political memoir. Politics and Prose, another D.C.-area independent bookstore, has placed a substantial order, for more than 2,000 copies. Bradley Graham, the store’s co-owner, said the book could have a ripple effect, since shoppers who flock to buy big bestsellers often pick up other titles as well. “It should make a significant difference in helping to boost sales at a time that we desperately need it,” Graham said. Even before its release, “A Promised Land” was exerting a strong gravitational pull on the industry. The Booker Prize decided to move its award ceremony, scheduled for Tuesday, to Thursday to avoid overlapping with the publication. (Obama will make an appearance at the Booker Prize online ceremony, alongside novelists Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, where he will talk about what he has taken from reading past Booker-winning novels.) Readers have been waiting for years for Obama’s account of his time in the White House, which took him around 2 1/2 years longer to write than he anticipated. “I expected to be done in a year,” Obama writes in his preface. “It’s fair to say that the writing process didn’t go exactly as I’d planned.” A representative for Obama said the timing of the release was dictated by his writing schedule, which continued into this summer, when the election cycle was already in full swing. “President Obama was completely focused this fall on helping elect Joe Biden, so there was never a thought given to having it come out in the lead-up to the election,” said Katie Hill, communications director for Obama. Now, Obama is promoting his book at a tense and delicate political moment, as President-elect Biden seeks to lay the groundwork for his administration while President Donald Trump refuses to accept the results of the election. As a former president who retains high approval ratings with the public, Obama will no doubt be called on in interviews to address the current climate of partisan division, and to deliver his views on how Biden should navigate it. But Obama also wants to avoid stepping into Biden’s spotlight. “President Obama is very aware, as he will be out there talking about his book, that he’s not the leader of the Democratic Party,” Hill said. “He does not want to be out there in any way overshadowing Joe Biden.” Of course, the biggest obstacle to any plan in 2020 is the coronavirus. As the virus continued to spread through the summer and early fall, it became clear that Obama would not be able to conduct a book tour with appearances in front of large audiences, like Michelle Obama’s nationwide tour for “Becoming,” which involved events in major sports arenas. Obama isn’t holding any in-person events, except for select interviews. Instead, he will rely on reaching readers through his large social media following — he has more than 125 million Twitter followers, and around 90 million followers on Facebook and Instagram combined — and interviews with traditional outlets like “60 Minutes,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” Oprah Winfrey’s Apple TV show and The Atlantic magazine, as well as on podcasts and youth-focused media outlets. He may also hold some live virtual events, Hill said. There’s a long literary tradition of former presidents publishing reflections of their time in office, tracing back to works by James Buchanan and Theodore Roosevelt. While some became bestsellers, including George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” and Bill Clinton’s “My Life,” former presidents’ accounts can often be dutiful and plodding marches through recent history. Expectations are considerably higher for “A Promised Land,” which has been highly anticipated ever since the Obamas jointly signed a record-breaking multibook deal for $65 million with Penguin Random House in 2017. Michelle Obama’s book has sold 14 million copies worldwide, including more than 8 million in the United States and Canada. Barack Obama’s previous books have also been commercial and critical hits. “Dreams From My Father,” originally published in 1995, became a bestseller after Obama rose to political prominence. That memoir has sold more than 3.3 million copies in the United States and Canada, while his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” which was more policy-oriented, has sold nearly 4.3 million copies, according to Crown. Rachel Klayman, Obama’s longtime editor at Crown, said “A Promised Land” was more challenging for him to write than his previous two books. While he had some assistance with the research, and sought editorial feedback from former members of his administration, he wrote the book himself. The first time Obama met with Klayman to discuss it, she said, he had several chapters outlined on a yellow legal pad. He planned to begin the book with a scene on the night he won the Iowa Caucus in 2008, a pivotal moment on his path to the White House. When he handed in the first draft, Klayman was surprised to see that he opened instead with a brief scene at the White House’s West Colonnade, and then a flashback to his time as a young adult in Hawaii. Initially, Obama planned to cover his eight years as president in a single volume, but it became clear as he was writing that such a book would have been too vast and unwieldy. “A Promised Land” covers Obama’s youth and his political awakening, and ends with him meeting the Navy SEAL team involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. “When I read the early chapters, I told him he was a completist, and that would make it hard to bring it in at a reasonable length, and I wasn’t wrong,” said Klayman, who added that she felt the decision to split the book into two volumes enhanced the narrative. “He’s a superb writer, but no one would accuse him of being succinct.” After Obama finished the book, a handful of trusted readers got early copies, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Wilkerson said Obama’s book was more introspective than a standard political memoir. “I found it to be a balance of grandeur and intimacy,” she said. “He’s very frank.” Booksellers hope Obama’s candor will draw customers back into their stores. Lauren Zimmerman, who owns Writer’s Block Bookstore in Winter Park, Florida, said her community, just north of Orlando, is fairly purple politically, and she doesn’t expect many conservatives to buy the book. But she still placed an order for more than 40 copies. For a John Grisham book, she said, the store would normally order about a dozen. “There are people who don’t necessarily buy books all the time, but they will buy this one,” she said. There will also likely be customers who want to have the book in their homes as a visible object, even if they read it as an e-book or listen to it as an audiobook — or don’t bother to read it at all. “I remember when we had our first Catholic president, people had his picture on their wall,” said Kris Kleindienst, a co-owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis. “I feel like for some of our households, this book is that.”

Obama memoir could be booksellers' savior

In his memoir which will be up for sale on Tuesday, former US president Barack Obama has revealed that President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden </a>was not in favour of raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.&nbsp;

"Joe weighed in against the raid," Obama wrote in 'A Promised Land', referring to the Navy Seals mission in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011, as reported by The Guardian.&nbsp;

Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/from-sonias-beauty-to-manmohans-integrity-heres-what-barack-obama-wrote-on-congress-leaders-342800">From Sonia's beauty to Manmohan's 'integrity': Here's what Barack Obama wrote on Congress leaders</a>

It is so far not clear whether Biden advised against the raid or not, but during this presidential election, Republicans attacked him via ads that he was completely against the action on Laden.&nbsp;

Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/rahul-gandhi-like-a-child-trying-to-impress-teacher-barack-obama-says-in-his-new-memoir-a-promised-land-342781">Rahul Gandhi like a child trying to impress teacher: Barack Obama says in his new memoir 'A Promised Land'</a>

Biden has claimed that in a group discussion on the raid, he urged Obama to take more time, saying "don't go". He added that subsequently, he told the president to follow his "instincts".&nbsp;

Obama further wrote that Obama, like defence secretary Robert Gates, was concerned about "the enormous consequences of failure" and suggested president to "defer any decision until the intelligence community was more certain that bin Laden was in the compound".

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"I appreciated Joe's willingness to buck the prevailing mood and ask tough questions, often in the interest of giving me the space I needed for my own internal deliberations," Obama wrote.&nbsp;

In his memoir which will be up for sale on Tuesday, former US president Barack Obama has revealed that President-elect Joe Biden was not in favour of raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

In his memoir which will be up for sale on Tuesday, former US president Barack Obama has revealed that President-elect Joe Biden was not in favour of raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. "Joe weighed in against the raid," Obama wrote in 'A Promised Land', referring to the Navy Seals mission in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011, as reported by The Guardian. Also read | From Sonia's beauty to Manmohan's 'integrity': Here's what Barack Obama wrote on Congress leaders It is so far not clear whether Biden advised against the raid or not, but during this presidential election, Republicans attacked him via ads that he was completely against the action on Laden. Also read | Rahul Gandhi like a child trying to impress teacher: Barack Obama says in his new memoir 'A Promised Land' Biden has claimed that in a group discussion on the raid, he urged Obama to take more time, saying "don't go". He added that subsequently, he told the president to follow his "instincts". Obama further wrote that Obama, like defence secretary Robert Gates, was concerned about "the enormous consequences of failure" and suggested president to "defer any decision until the intelligence community was more certain that bin Laden was in the compound". × "I appreciated Joe's willingness to buck the prevailing mood and ask tough questions, often in the interest of giving me the space I needed for my own internal deliberations," Obama wrote.

Joe Biden advised against raid that killed Osama bin Laden, says Obama's new book

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Spent childhood listening to Ramayana and Mahabharata: Barack Obama in memoir

Obama memoir could be booksellers' savior

Joe Biden advised against raid that killed Osama bin Laden, says Obama's new book