Barack Obama had the story; the media were just there to cover it. David Brooks praised his pleated pants, Chris Matthews got a “thrill up his leg”—and who could blame them? The story of the first black president was sure to sell. Jodi Kantor of the New York Times and David Remnick of the New Yorker both inked lucrative deals for books about Obama. Joe Biden famously said, “You’ve got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Now, David Maraniss, an associate editor at the Washington Post, has attempted to write that storybook in his 600-page-plus Barack Obama: The Story.
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