She let us in. Decade by decade, she lays it out. She’s just like all of us. You will get to know her better than you know even your closest friends. It’s captivating and enlightening. Her childhood in Chicago and young adult life at Princeton and Harvard were filled with family, friendship, loss, love, community, dignity, ambition, laughter, and great memories for us all to enjoy. She painted the pictures so well. I loved her stories about Barack Obama and her mother. I learned quite a bit about POTUS. What a well-written, first-class memoir!
Going doing in history as the best FLOTUS ever, mainly because she had a full 8 years to engineer so many initiatives and touch so many lives and also because she is still young and motivated. She has many more years of impact, including her initiatives—Let’s Move!, Reach Higher, Let Girls Learn, and Joining Forces. The day she and President Obama left the White House, forty-five million kids were eating healthier breakfasts and lunches; eleven million students were getting sixty minutes of physical activity every day through our Let’s Move! Active Schools program. Through Joining Forces, they’d helped persuade businesses to hire or train more than 1.5 million veterans and military spouses. On education, she and Barack had leveraged billions of dollars to help girls around the world get the schooling they deserve. More than twenty-eight hundred Peace Corps volunteers were now trained to implement programs for girls internationally. And in the United States, she had helped more young people sign up for federal student aid, supported school counselors, and elevated College Signing Day to a national level.
All this and they managed two terms in office without a major scandal. They held themselves and the people who worked with them to the highest standards of ethics and decency.
I must add that I was a tad set back regarding her comments regarding her speech stating ‘she was proud of her country for the first time as an adult’ and of comments about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama seems to not take accountability for this statement, seemingly backpedaling and blaming the media. I was hoping she would own up to it. When your great-grandparents come to America greeted with ease, new opportunities and wealth creation, you are very proud of America. However, when your great-grandparents come to America greeted with chattel slavery, family separation, and murder, well, the proudness is a "stretch goal". This should be understandable for all those who know true American history. It adds context of the shameful history of black people in this country. Juxtapose this with the Rev. Wright headlines and it's like crying foul on one move and chastising someone else (Rev. Wright) for a similar move. She wrote that, “Barack and I were dismayed to see this, a reflection of the worst and most paranoid parts of the man who’d married us…”. Obama's extreme judgment on Rev Wright's "spitfire" preaching, and "narrow-mindedness" seamed very dismissive. She recognizes that this is the mindset of those who'd come of age in a time of segregation, yet used language such as "absurd" and vitriol" to him. When her senior thesis was discovered as to be a black power manifesto, however, she called it "small-minded" and "ludicrous" of the media. She said she was young and naïve. They listened to scores of his sermons throughout the 1990s, yet it's not until 2008 that they are appalled. They distanced themselves for political reasons in 2008 from the man and continue the same narrative and direction. This was, as I believe, to pave the path for their standards of decency. I concluded that her perspective has evolved at a level that none of us will fully understand. She’s sat in kitchens of Iowans, had adorable conversations with the Queen of England and has heard stories of tens of thousands of everyday people. I put this all in perspective...no doubt, and love her like a big sister nonetheless.
Her experiences at 54 are incredibly rich, like none other, and we should all be wholly inspired by this memoir.
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Reviews with images
Our Forever President
We are overjoyed that we purchased several copies of this extraordinary book. Each photo is remarkable. One can easily see the emotion contained within each photo. I've written & rewritten this review several times. Each time I thought of 'submitting' it, I changed my mind. To simply say we are grateful to President & Mrs. Obama is an understatement of vast proportion. The talent of Pete Souza is unmatched. He, perfectly, captured every emotion in each photograph he had taken. Again, I'm overjoyed that we'd purchased several copies of this extraordinary book. They make once in a lifetime gifts.
Top reviews from other countries
Joel Bravo
Super libro, a un superprecio !!!
Reviewed in Mexico on October 16, 2023
SP
TALENTED PHOTOGRAPHER & WONDERFUL SUBJECT
Reviewed in Canada on December 15, 2020P.
Questa è Fotografia allo stato puro. Un libro eccellente, da guardare e riguardare. Regalo perfetto.
Reviewed in Italy on May 17, 2021