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.
Praise
"Peter Baker's Obama: The Call of History is a masterfully written and stunningly illustrated remembrance of our forty-fourth president. Baker has emerged as the go-to journalist and sage on recent U.S. presidential events. Obama is a full-bore testimonial to Baker's graceful prose style, judicious reporting, and sterling history-minded analysis. Highly recommended!"author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Land of America, Douglas Brinkley
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"This is an elegant and evocative look back at the Obama years as history, combining narrative and commentary by Peter Baker, one of our most astute observers of the modern presidency, with striking, well-chosen photographs and other illustrations."Michael Beschloss, presidential historian
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"With his unique gifts as a diligent journalist and a first-rate historian, Peter Baker has given us a compelling first look at a consequential presidency—an eight-year reign that will be studied forever. And here is where we will all start that conversation: with Baker's graceful and insightful account of Barack Obama's victories, defeats, and evolving legacy."Jon Meacham, author of Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
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"Peter Baker’s Obama is a coffee-table book, chock-a-block with stunning photos, that rises above its genre thanks to the quality of the author’s reporting and analysis."Foreign Affairs, Joe Klein
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"This is the best book about President Obama I’ve ever read – it’s totally objective but beautifully written and filled with new little nuggets that even I, who covered the administration from start to finish, never knew."Executive Producer, Face the Nation, Mary Hager
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Journalism may be history's first draft, but Baker's words might qualify as prophecy's first blush...Both a compelling biography and a coffee-table, large format work with beautiful photography commemorating the Obama years.The Washington Post, Michael Eric Dyson
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"Very likely not since tributes to the assassinated John F. KennedyThe New York Times Book Review, James Goodman
will a book of photographs of a president so recently departed make
millions of Americans want to cry."
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"Peter Baker dug up the best and worst moments of President BarackThe Daily Beast, Lyne Lucien
Obama's two terms in office to masterfully weave into a condensed
account."
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