The World As It Is

Book 24 of my 2020 Reading Challenge

read from March 22 - 31

The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes

Summary (excerpted from the book jacket)

published 2018

For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes saw almost everything that happened at the center of the Obama administration - first as a speechwriter, then as a 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.

My Opinion

3 stars

The writing was really good which is to be expected from a speechwriter.  Nothing felt dense even when getting into minutiae about policy.  Some of the chapters felt a little long depending on how much interest I had in the topic but he was very forthcoming about the good and the difficult parts of the job.

3 stars isn't a bad rating by any means but the reason I didn't rate it higher even though I liked the writing is because I expected more about him since it's listed as a memoir.  He made occasional references to the time constraints and how it affected his family but I would've liked more.  He touches on it a little with passages such as this one about foreign trips: "You stay in beautiful places, see strange things, meet famous people, and develop an intense camaraderie with the people you are with.  But I felt like it was impossible to explain these things to people back home - my wife, my parents, my old friends.  It was like you inhabited two parallel lives - one that made you who you were, and the other that was consuming that person, and transforming you into someone else."

Quote from the Book

"Every presidency is a story with one person at the center of it. This is how America organizes its political life and history books."