Obama, Barack
Who is the audience for this book? Most people buy it to keep it on their coffeetable to start conversations -- the typical voter would not read it through. Most political analysts know everything that's in here already -- there are no daring new policies nor deep personal revelations. I've concluded that the intended audience is the excerpter -- people like me. This book got excerpted in Time magazine, for example, and Obama got a big cover spread, with a presidential headline. The Time excerpts were pleasant to read -- a little uplift for a few pages. But the book is just so chock-full of respectfulness and understanding and consensus-building and bipartisanship that no excerpter can find anything BUT uplift in any excerpt (including me).