8 results for "Memoir"

The world as it is: a memoir of the Obama White House

Rhodes, Ben
"For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes saw almost everything that happened at the center of the Obama administration, first as a speechwriter, then as deputy national security advisor, and finally as a multipurpose aide and close collaborator. He started every morning in the Oval Office with the President's Daily Briefing, traveled the world with Obama, and was at the center of some of the most consequential and controversial moments of the presidency. Now he tells the full story of his partnership--and, ultimately, friendship--with a man who also happened to be a historic president of the United States....Rhodes shows what it was like to be there from the early days of the Obama campaign to the final hours of the presidency. It is a story populated by such characters as Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, and--above all--Barack Obama, who comes to life on the page in moments of great urgency and disarming intimacy. This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama's worldview and presidency, a chronicle of a political education and an essential record of the forces that shaped the last decade."--
Random House 2019 450 pages

Thanks, Obama: my hopey changey White House years

Litt, David
"A different kind of White House memoir, presidential speechwriter David Litt's comic account of his years spent working with Barack Obama and his reflection on Obama's legacy in the age of Trump. Like many twentysomethings, David Litt frequently embarrassed himself in front of his boss's boss. Unlike many twentysomethings, Litt's boss's boss was President Obama. At age twenty-four, Litt became one of the youngest White House speechwriters in history. Along with remarks on issues like climate change and criminal justice reform, he was the president's go-to writer for comedy. As the lead on the White House Correspondents' Dinner speech (the "State of the Union of jokes"), he was responsible for some of President Obama's most memorable moments, including Keegan-Michael Key's appearance as Luther, Obama's "anger translator." With a humorist's eye for detail and a convert's zeal, Litt takes us inside his eight years on the front lines of Obamaworld. In his political coming-of-age story, he goes from starry-eyed college student--a self-described "Obamabot"--to nervous junior speechwriter to White House senior staff. His behind-the-scenes anecdotes answer questions you never knew you had: What's the classiest White House men's room? What's the social scene like on Air Force One? How do you force the National Security Council to stop hitting reply-all on every e-mail? In between lighthearted observations, Litt uses his experience to address one of today's most important issues: the legacy and future of the Obama movement in the age of Donald Trump"--
Ecco 2017-09-19 310 pages

Targeted: my inside story of Cambridge Analytica and how Trump, Brexit and Facebook broke democracy

Kaiser, Brittany
In this explosive memoir, a political consultant and technology whistleblower reveals the disturbing truth about the multi-billion-dollar data industry, revealing to the public how companies are getting richer using our personal information and exposing how Cambridge Analytica exploited weaknesses in privacy laws to help elect Donald Trump. When Brittany Kaiser joined Cambridge Analytica – the UK-based political consulting firm funded by conservative billionaire and Donald Trump patron Robert Mercer – she was an idealistic young professional working on her fourth degree in human rights law and international relations. A veteran of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, Kaiser's goal was to utilize data for humanitarian purposes, most notably to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. But her experience inside Cambridge Analytica opened her eyes to the tremendous risks that this unregulated industry poses to privacy and democracy. Targeted is Kaiser's eyewitness chronicle of the dramatic and disturbing story of the rise and fall of Cambridge Analytica. She reveals to the public how Facebook's lax policies and lack of sufficient national laws allowed voters to be manipulated in both Britain and the United States, where personal data was weaponised to spread fake news and racist messaging during the Brexit vote and the 2016 election. But the damage isn't done Kaiser warns; the 2020 election can be compromised as well if we continue to do nothing. In the aftermath of the U.S. election, as she became aware of the horrifying reality of what Cambridge Analytica had done in support of Donald Trump, Kaiser made the difficult choice to expose the truth. Risking her career, relationships, and personal safety, she told authorities about the data industry's unethical business practices, eventually testifying before Parliament.
HarperCollinsPublishers 2019 392 pages

The Clinton wars

Blumenthal, Sidney
The Clinton Wars is the remarkable story of the Clinton White House, as told through the eyes of Sidney Blumental, Assistant to the President from 1997 to 2001. A long-standing friend, adviser and confidant to the Clintons, Blumenthal's unique position in the White House secured him direct access not only to such scenes as the inside of Air Force One, and the sealed Senate impeachment hearing room, but also to the minds of those making crucial decisions. Offering far more than revealing anecdotes and insider stories, this memoir stands as an important work on American politics and a central and essential reference for all future historians.
Penguin 2004 832 pages

The Americanist

Aaron, Daniel
“I have read all of Daniel Aaron’s books, and admired them, but in The Americanist I believe he has composed an intellectual and social memoir for which he will be remembered. His self-portrait is marked by personal tact and admirable restraint: he is and is not its subject. The Americanist is a vision of otherness: literary and academic friends and acquaintances, here and abroad. Eloquently phrased and free of nostalgia, it catches a lost world that yet engendered much of our own.” —Harold Bloom “ The Americanist is the absorbing intellectual autobiography of Daniel Aaron, who is the leading proponent and practitioner of American Studies. Written with grace and wit, it skillfully blends Daniel Aaron’s personal story with the history of the field he has done so much to create. This is a first-rate book by a first-rate scholar.” —David Herbert Donald, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University The Americanist is author and critic Daniel Aaron’s anthem to nearly a century of public and private life in America and abroad. Aaron, who is widely regarded as one of the founders of American Studies, graduated from the University of Michigan, received his Ph.D. from Harvard, and taught for over three decades each at Smith College and Harvard. Aaron writes with unsentimental nostalgia about his childhood in Los Angeles and Chicago and his later academic career, which took him around the globe, often in the role of America’s accidental yet impartial critic. When Walt Whitman, whom Aaron frequently cites as a touchstone, wrote, “I am large, I contain multitudes,” he could have been describing Daniel Aaron—the consummate erudite and Renaissance individual whose allegiance to the truth always outweighs mere partisan loyalty. Not only should Aaron’s book stand as a resplendent and summative work from one of the finest thinkers of the last hundred years, it also succeeds on its own as a first-rate piece of literature, on a par with the writings of any of its subjects. The Americanist is a veritable Who’s Who of twentieth-century writers Aaron interviewed, interacted with, or otherwise encountered throughout his life: Ralph Ellison, Robert Frost, Lillian Hellman, Richard Hofstadter, Alfred Kazin, Sinclair Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge, John Crowe Ransom, Upton Sinclair, Edmund Wilson, Leonard Woolf, and W. B. Yeats, to name only a few. Aaron’s frank and personal observations of these literary lights make for lively reading. As well, scattered throughout The Americanist are illuminating portraits of American presidents living and passed—miniature masterworks of astute political observation that offer dazzlingly fresh approaches to well-trod subjects.
University of Michigan Press 2007-02-26 199 pages