Book SummaryA Promised Land, by Barack Obama

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of A Promised Land

A Promised Land is former U.S. President Barack Obama’s memoir, taking us on his journey from being a biracial kid raised by a single mother to a transformative historical figure as the nation’s first African-American president. Published in 2020, A Promised Land is Obama’s third book (preceded by 1995’s Dreams From My Father and 2006’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream), and it is the first in a planned series of memoirs covering his presidency from 2009 to 2017.

At every step of his political career—from obscure state senator to national convention keynote speaker to U.S. Senator to President—Barack Obama was guided by a deep and abiding faith in the fundamental unity of Americans, the potential and promise of America, and the power of the democratic system to effect real change for ordinary people.

In telling the story of Barack Obama’s rise, A Promised Land functions on one level as a simple biography, one that many readers are likely familiar with. Obama describes his political awakenings as a young man, his early career as an Illinois state senator, his electrifying keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and his election in 2008 as the country’s first Black president.

Once in office, Obama details the challenges his administration faced, including:

• The push to rescue a collapsing economy following the 2008 financial crisis
• The fight to pass the Affordable Care Act and take the nation’s first steps toward universal health care
• Drawing down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and bringing the War on Terror more closely in line with America’s constitutional values
• A polarized political climate, characterized by root-and-branch opposition from the Republican Party and the rise of a new racialized form of politics
• The successful effort to bring Osama bin Laden to justice

Beyond the straightforward narrative of Obama’s life and career, A Promised Land explores several important themes:

• The centrality of race in America
• The power of democracy to bring about change
• The importance of working within the system of electoral politics
• The need to make compromises and adopt a pragmatic approach
• Faith in the idea of America and its crucial role as a beacon of hope and inspiration to countries around the world

The Centrality of Race in America

Growing up as the biracial child of a Black father and a white mother, Barack Obama understood from an early age just how important race was in American life. His biracial parentage marked him out as unique, growing up in an era when interracial marriages and relationships were rare—and even still prohibited by law in some U.S. jurisdictions.

He was keenly aware that being Black marked him out as different, “other.” His schoolmates would sometimes remark on how he failed to conform to Black stereotypes they saw in film and television; other times, he noticed that his family seemed to exist on a financial knife’s edge, in a way that those of his peers didn’t. It was impossible to miss the powerful and often decisive role that race played in American social and cultural life, as well as the inescapable link between race and class.

Obama saw how important race was, not only as it pertained to his personal life and identity, but to American social, political, and economic life. As a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s, he saw how the city government overlooked the needs of Black communities, from sanitation to education and health to asbestos removal.

Later, as president trying to ameliorate the economic damage from the 2008 financial crisis, he saw how disproportionately the nation’s wave of foreclosures and bankruptcies had hit America’s Black and Latino population. And he observed how racially tinged politics like the “birther” movement (which held that he hadn’t been born in the United States and thus, wasn’t eligible to be president) still had tremendous power to sow division, hate, and mistrust in 21st-century America.

Trying to Transcend Race

As a presidential candidate, and later as president, Obama sought to use his platform to defuse tensions between Black and white Americans. He observed that long-simmering Black feelings of betrayal and anger at their historical experience in America could occasionally boil over into overheated rhetoric and unfair accusations of racism toward whites.

At the same time, he noted how many whites felt offense and resentment at the presumption of racism. Many working-class, blue-collar white voters viewed the national conversation about race and racism as a rejection of their own struggles and hardships, a way of saying that economic and social problems within white communities were irrelevant and unworthy of attention.

The Tea Party and Racialized Politics

Despite Obama’s attempts to transcend racial barriers and present himself as a unifying figure, he could not overcome the centrality of race as a defining issue in American politics. As the nation’s first Black president, he was the target of a burgeoning racialized style of right-wing politics.

On issues ranging from foreclosure relief to health care reform, Republicans and their allies in right-wing media cast Obama’s policy proposals as socialist and un-American, while portraying Obama himself as a dangerous outsider who represented an existential threat to the traditional American way of life.

The Tea Party movement arose as a direct response to the Obama presidency. The Tea Party was a right-wing populist movement focused on opposition to progressive taxation and the welfare state. A core message of the movement was that the lazy and undeserving “takers” were draining the resources of the hardworking “makers” through overly generous redistributive public programs.

Obama understood the movement as a racially driven reaction to himself, with the definition of who was a “taker” (urban Blacks) and who...

A Promised Land Summary Shortform Introduction

A Promised Land is former U.S. President Barack Obama’s bestselling memoir, taking us on his journey from being a biracial kid raised by a single mother to a transformative historical figure as the nation’s first African-American president. Published in 2020, A Promised Land is Obama’s third book (preceded by 1995’s Dreams From My Father and 2006’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream), and it is the first in a planned series of volumes covering his presidency from 2009 to 2017.

At every step of his political career—from obscure state senator to national convention keynote speaker to U.S. Senator to President—Barack Obama was guided by a deep and abiding faith in the fundamental unity of Americans, the potential and promise of America, and the power of the democratic system to effect real change for ordinary people.

In telling the story of Barack Obama’s rise, A Promised Land functions on one level as a simple biography, one that many readers are likely familiar with. Obama describes his political awakenings as a young man, his early career as an Illinois state senator, his electrifying keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and...

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 1: Straddling Two Worlds

Barack Obama spent his early years—as he would spend much of his adult life—straddling two worlds. As a child and then as a young man, he would struggle to reconcile the two halves of his identity.

Barack was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, to mother Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-1995) and father Barack Obama Sr. (1936-1982). His mother was a white woman whose family came from Kansas and was descended from Scots-Irish stock. His father was a Black man from Kenya who’d met Ann when he traveled to the U.S. to study at the University of Hawaii, where she was a student.

Barack’s biracial parentage marked him out as unique at an early age, growing up in an era when interracial marriages and relationships were rare—and even still prohibited by law in some U.S. jurisdictions.

The Beginnings of Racial Awareness

Even as an adolescent growing up in Hawaii, Barack was keenly aware that being Black made him different, “other.” His schoolmates would sometimes remark on how he failed to conform to Black stereotypes they saw in film and television; other times, he noticed that his family seemed to exist on a financial knife’s edge, in a way that those of his peers...

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 2: Entering Public Life

While he was weighing his options for his future, Barack met a young woman who would change the course of his life. In 1989, he was working a summer internship at a Chicago law firm when he met a young associate named Michelle Robinson.

Barack was immediately drawn to Michelle—her beauty, her quiet self-confidence, and her fierce intelligence. Michelle soon became not just Barack’s lover, but the closest friend he’d ever known—the closest friend he ever would know.

Although Michelle was no less driven than Barack, her path to success was different. As a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago, she knew that that path was beset by potential pitfalls and roadblocks. Because of her race and her gender, she understood that she would always have to prove to others that she belonged in the room—whether that room was at a high-powered Chicago law firm or, later, the White House.

Still, she was tenacious, able to challenge Barack, but also push him to fulfill his highest potential. For her part, Michelle was attracted to Barack’s idealism and his ability to inspire hope in others. A life with the ambitious Barack meant romance and adventure; a life with Michelle and her...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 3-4: Taking the Next Political Steps

Not long after his humiliation in his 2000 race for the House, Barack became a father for a second time when Michelle gave birth to Sasha Obama in June 2001. Now with a second child, Barack seriously considered settling into a quieter life of practicing law and teaching in Chicago, spending time with his growing family, and working on community-based issues at the local level—instead of continuing to try to make change in the world of electoral politics.

But changing political fortunes in Springfield convinced Barack to stay in office. After the 2000 census, the Democrats in the Illinois state legislature won the right to control the redistricting process for the next decade. This meant that they would be able to draw state senate districts that would more efficiently and favorably distribute their voters, clearing the path for them to take the majority for the first time in a decade.

Sure enough, Democrats swept the 2002 state elections and took the majority in the state Senate. With his party in control of the chamber and his close relationship with Emil Jones—who would now be the majority leader—**Barack would finally have an opportunity to meaningfully shape state...

Shortform Exercise: Understand Change

Think about how change is made in systems and organizations.

Have you ever been part of a system, culture, or organization (school, workplace, etc.) that you felt was in need of reform? Briefly describe the situation.

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 5-6: The Campaign Begins

On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama officially announced his candidacy for president on the steps of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln had delivered his famous “House Divided” speech in 1858.

In his announcement speech, he emphasized his vision of securing universal, affordable health care; guaranteeing that every child in America had access to a first-rate education; a withdrawal from the War in Iraq that had done so much to damage America’s prestige in the eyes of the world; and the need for Americans of all stripes to come together to renounce the old partisan struggles of the past and forge a new vision for the future of the country.

It was a powerful and compelling message. But now, he would have to take that vision on the road and sell it to the American people.

The Campaign Grind

Beyond the soaring rhetoric and grand vision, there was now the day-to-day grind of waging a competitive primary battle for the most powerful political office in the world.

Obama’s every word was now pored over by campaign journalists eager to catch the candidate making a misstep. In one early debate, he remarked that soldiers’ lives were being...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 7-9: On to Victory

As the primary campaign wore on past Super Tuesday (the date when the largest number of states hold their caucuses and primaries), Obama’s delegate lead over Hillary Clinton continued to grow. He boasted a substantial delegate lead by the end of February. The nomination looked to be his to lose.

Despite the early skepticism and doubt from the media and rival campaigns, it was clear that he had a national appeal and a winning message. Obama was delighted to see how the campaign was inspiring a new generation of young people and minorities to empower themselves through electoral politics for the first time. But at the same time, he was also apprehensive about the hype.

Since his college days, he had always wanted to build a mass movement, not a vehicle for his own power and celebrity. He feared that he was becoming just another charismatic leader, one onto whom supporters as well as opponents could project whatever they wished to see. He feared that such a movement would not be cohesive or ideas-driven enough to effect real change if it became too centered on one individual.

The Reverend Wright Controversy

**In March 2008, the campaign was upended when footage...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 10-11: The Obama Administration Takes Shape

In November and December 2008, Barack Obama—now President-elect Obama—was preparing to assume the most powerful office in the world. Beyond the obvious gravity of the responsibilities he was set to assume, Barack and his family saw their daily lives changing before their eyes, their privacy and normalcy melting away, never to return again.

Michelle and the girls now had to get used to living under the shadow of the Secret Service and adhering to the myriad security protocols necessary for protecting the nation’s first Black First Family. Barack saw—with some amusement, but also disquiet—how he now entered and left buildings through deserted service entrances and side doors, accompanied by a phalanx of Secret Service agents. Even in the midst of bustling cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., the security procedures left him living in a virtual ghost town wherever he went.

But there was little time to focus on this. He now had the monumental task before him of forming a government during the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Staffing Up and the Realities of Governing

Obama first needed to assemble his core White House team. Although the...

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 12: Rescuing the Economy

One of the most important things for President Obama was reading constituent mail from working Americans. He believed it was imperative for him to hear from the people and learn as much as possible about what they were thinking and how they believed his administration was addressing problems in their day-to-day lives.

Especially in the darkest days of the recession, these letters made for difficult reading. While many writers expressed support for the new president and enthusiasm for his historic election, it was impossible not to see the dismay bubbling just under the surface. The letters told of jobs lost, homes foreclosed upon, children gone hungry, and dreams crushed

For Obama, this window into the lives of the people he served was key. It helped him take his attention away from the drama of Washington and focus on what really mattered—fighting to make the lives of ordinary Americans better.

Day-to-Day Governance

Of course, maintaining focus on that fight could be difficult when Obama was still responsible for managing the day-to-day affairs of the federal government and its millions of employees.

Given the sheer size of the government, this in and of itself...

Shortform Exercise: Consider Compromise

Think about the costs and benefits of compromise.

Have you ever been in a professional situation where you were forced to accept a compromise on a project or initiative you spearheaded? Describe what happened.

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 13: A New Foreign Policy Approach

So far, we’ve explored the early Obama administration’s domestic policies. But there were also pressing foreign policy needs. Obama inherited a muddled and chaotic national security situation. There was the ongoing threat of international terrorism, two overseas wars, and the urgent moral necessity of winding down America’s torture program being conducted at CIA-run sites around the world. The War on Terror, meanwhile, had already imposed enormous costs: nearly 3,000 U.S. troops killed and $1 trillion expended.

Fulfilling America’s Highest Ideals

Obama’s overarching foreign policy goal would be to make the nation truly fulfill its highest ideals.

As we saw, ever since he was a young man at Columbia in New York City, Obama had rejected the cynical worldview of many of his contemporaries on the left. While the United States had certainly perpetrated misdeeds and human rights abuses internationally—misdeeds that ultimately undermined America’s global credibility and its own national security—Obama did not believe that the U.S. was responsible for all the evil and suffering in the world.

In fact, he saw that America’s ideals of democracy, the rule of law, and free...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 14-15: On the World Stage

In that quest to build a more peaceful and stable world for future generations, one of the most important tasks before the Obama administration was repairing America’s badly damaged international relations.

The Bush administration’s aggressive military posture and clear disdain for international institutions like the United Nations had seriously undermined American moral authority on the world stage. This was a serious problem that threatened to make it difficult for the United States to secure international cooperation on urgent economic, environmental, and national security matters.

Despite America’s diminished reputation, Obama found that when he traveled internationally, there was still a great deal of enthusiasm among both foreign leaders and the general public for the United States. The idea and symbol of America still meant a great deal to people around the world, even if the reality had fallen short. After all, the U.S. was the world’s only remaining superpower, one that had spearheaded the generally peaceful and prosperous postwar order through its role in creating lasting institutions like the UN, NATO, World Bank, World Health Organization, World Trade...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 16-17: The Fight for Universal Health Care

So far, we’ve explored the Obama administration’s efforts to rescue the domestic and global economy, refocus America’s commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and set a new course in U.S. foreign policy.

But while all of these developments were taking place, the administration was also gearing up for the battle to pass what would become its signature domestic policy achievement—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

The Unfinished Work of Liberalism

The push to bring universal health care to the United States was the great unfinished work of American liberalism. Every Democratic president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried and failed to enact some version of universal health care, with the most high-profile defeat being President Bill Clinton’s health care proposal in 1994 (derisively labeled “Hillarycare”).

Particularly galling to progressives like Obama was the fact that every other industrialized country had long since achieved some version of universal coverage. In the U.S., however, conservatives and their allies in the medical industry had always succeeded in blocking it, usually by stoking fear about a “government...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 18-20: Managing a Dangerous World

As Obama learned throughout his first year in office, a president must deal with multiple events all at once. While leading his administration through a new strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was also shepherding the landmark Affordable Care Act through the tortuous legislative process.

And in the midst of that political battle, Obama would be forced to confront several others. In this chapter, we’ll explore the Obama administration’s fight to:

• Get a new justice confirmed to the United States Supreme Court
• Halt Iran’s dangerous nuclear program
• Pressure China to end trade policies that hurt American workers and businesses

The Power of the Supreme Court

In May 2009, shortly after the results of Treasury Secretary Geithner’s bank stress test came back and just as the health care legislation was beginning to take shape, Justice David Souter announced his intention to retire from the Supreme Court.

Souter was a member of the Court’s liberal wing, albeit one appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush (1924-2018), and had strategically timed his retirement for when a Democratic president and Senate would be able to replace him.

In nominating Souter’s...

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 21: Obama and Environmentalism

Growing up, Barack was raised by his mother Ann to believe that humans had a responsibility to safeguard the natural environment and protect the planet that they all shared. Growing up in Hawaii, where he could freely surf the waves and explore the islands in all their natural beauty, young Barack recognized that the Earth was humanity’s birthright, belonging to no one and available to everyone.

As he launched his political career, his outlook continued to be generally pro-environment. Environmentalism, however, was not central to his politics in the way that other issues were. That would change, however, once he became president and had to deal with environmental concerns on a truly global scale.

In this chapter, we’ll examine:

• The existential threat posed by global warming
• The administration’s plans for dealing with it through tighter regulation of greenhouse gas emissions
• The effort to secure an international commitment to tackling climate change at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference

The Stakes of Global Warming

**The issue of global warming changed the way Obama viewed environmentalism. It was not just about protecting scenic views...

Shortform Exercise: Explore Sacrifice

Think about the role of sacrifice and trade-offs in achieving mutual goals.

Have you ever been in a professional situation in which you had to convince another person to sacrifice their short-term interests toward the achievement of a larger goal? Describe the situation.

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 22-23: The Administration in Crisis

Despite victories like the signing of the historic Affordable Care Act and the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Obama administration was experiencing sinking political fortunes in 2010. Gone were the heady early days of the administration when the nation and the political press teemed with optimism at the new, young, African-American president.

Now, the president’s approval ratings were in steady decline and the tenor of media coverage surrounding the administration had a new tone of cynicism and negativity. Events over the next year would only add to the administration’s troubles as the president and his team struggled to find their footing. In this chapter, we’ll look at:

• Declining morale among the White House staff as fatigue set in
• The Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and its catastrophic environmental impact
• The Democrats’ defeat in the 2010 midterms and its grim implications for Obama’s agenda

A Hostile Political Climate, Declining Morale

The weak economy was a main driver of the rough political headwinds Obama and his fellow Democrats were sailing against in 2010. Although TARP, the stimulus, the auto industry...

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 24: The Lame-Duck Session

In November and December 2010, Obama and the Democrats would enjoy one of the most productive lame-duck sessions on record. Although Democrats had been beaten in the 2010 midterm elections, the new Republican House majority wouldn’t be seated until early January (the period between an election and the seating of new members is known as the lame-duck period).

This meant that there would still be two more months of a Democratic-controlled Congress—and President Obama intended to use this time to push through some important reforms.

In this chapter, we’ll look at:

• The effort to roll back the Bush tax cuts
• The fight to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and allow LGBTQ Americans to serve openly in the military
• The push to provide a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants

Rolling Back the Bush Tax Cuts

The Bush tax cuts had been passed in 2001 and 2003 during George W. Bush’s first term. Obama had long been opposed to the tax cuts, whose benefits had gone overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans. The top 2 percent of U.S. taxpayers received a staggering $130 billion from the tax cuts, while their overall $1.3 trillion price tag had led to...

A Promised Land Summary Chapters 25-26: Building Global Consensus

Through managing two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barack Obama had learned what all other modern U.S. presidents had learned—that the Middle East was a highly unstable region of the world. With a few exceptions, much of the region was economically underdeveloped, highly dependent on oil exports, and governed by oppressive regimes with poor human rights records. Unfortunately, many of these regimes had also been supported by the United States financially and militarily.

Within this broader context of sectarian strife, political repression, and economic stagnation, the administration worried that populist uprisings were inevitable. The region’s dictators would only be able to keep the lid on the region’s tensions for so long. Eventually, the powder keg would blow—and the consequences could be destabilizing, violent, and even deadly.

Given this situation, foreign policy experts in the administration like National Security Council advisor Samantha Power believed that easing repressive Middle East regimes toward democracy and human rights would be a humanitarian triumph—and, ultimately, be in the long-term security interests of the U.S. and the world.

In this chapter, we’ll...

A Promised Land Summary Chapter 27: The Hunt for Osama bin Laden

In previous chapters, we’ve explored Obama’s national security strategy and his desire to bring the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” more in line with America’s constitutional principles. We’ve also seen how his status as the nation’s first African-American president opened him up to racialized forms of political attack that no previous president had ever had to deal with.

In the spring of 2011, both these themes of his presidency would come to a head as he had to deal with two very different, but very important figures whom Obama considered to be dangerous threats to his vision of America. In this chapter, we’ll examine:

• The mission to bring 9/11 mastermind and U.S. public enemy #1 Osama bin Laden to justice
• The “birther” phenomenon and how it fueled the rise of a new figure who would soon come to dominate American politics—Donald Trump

Bringing bin Laden to Justice

Shortly after taking office, President Obama set down one of his top national security priorities: capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader and the man primarily responsible for the 9/11 attack that had resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans. Obama told National...

A Promised Land Summary The Work Ahead

By May 2011, Obama could take stock of all that he and his administration had achieved. He’d gone from being a brooding biracial kid from Honolulu with middling high school grades to the nation’s first African-American president.

His campaign and his presidency had been a source of inspiration for billions of young people both in the United States and around the world, showcasing the power and efficacy of democracy. As president, his administration has rescued the world economy from a depression, saved the American auto industry, taken a...

Shortform Exercise: Understand A Promised Land

Think about your main takeaways from A Promised Land.

Do you think that America has fundamentally lived up to its principles, has consistently fallen short of them, or landed somewhere in between? Explain your answer.