Barack Obama’s Memoir ‘A Promised Land’ is Coming in November!

Barack Obama’s new memoir will be published in November, shortly after the election, his publisher, Penguin Random House, announced on Thursday. The memoir will be published in two volumes. The first volume, titled “A Promised Land“, is scheduled for global release on Tuesday, November 17, 2020, and will be issued simultaneously in 25 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Czech, Finnish and Vietnamese.

“There’s no feeling like finishing a book, and I’m proud of this one,” Obama said in a statement on Instagram. “I’ve spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency, and in ‘A Promised Land’ I’ve tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office: the key events and people who shaped it, my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made, and the political, economic, and cultural forces that my team and I had to confront then — and that as a nation we are grappling with still.”

According to him, the book gives readers a sense of his and Michelle’s personal journey during that time as well, “with all the incredible highs and lows.” He also offers his thoughts on how to heal the country’s divisions and hopes the book will inspire young people to “play their part in remaking the world for the better.”

View this post on Instagram

There’s no feeling like finishing a book, and I’m proud of this one. I’ve spent the last few years reflecting on my presidency, and in A Promised Land I’ve tried to provide an honest accounting of my presidential campaign and my time in office: the key events and people who shaped it, my take on what I got right and the mistakes I made, and the political, economic, and cultural forces that my team and I had to confront then—and that as a nation we are grappling with still. In the book, I’ve also tried to give readers a sense of the personal journey that Michelle and I went through during those years, with all the incredible highs and lows. And finally, at a time when America is going through such enormous upheaval, the book offers some of my broader thoughts on how we can heal the divisions in our country going forward and make our democracy work for everybody—a task that won’t depend on any single president, but on all of us as engaged citizens. Along with being a fun and informative read, I hope more than anything that the book inspires young people across the country—and around the globe—to take up the baton, lift up their voices, and play their part in remaking the world for the better.

A post shared by Barack Obama (@barackobama) on Sep 17, 2020 at 5:00am PDT

“A Promised Land” will be published in hardcover and digital formats, and an unabridged audio edition of the book, read by President Obama himself, will be simultaneously released in digital and physical formats by Penguin Random House Audio.

The publication date for the second, and concluding, the volume of the memoirs has not yet been set and will be announced at a later date. Details about President Obama’s book tour will be announced later this year.

Here’s a brief description of the book:

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.