Sasha Abramsky

Book Report: ‘Inside Obama’s Brain’

Contents:

“Inside Obama’s Brain”: A Discussion with the Book’s Author, Sasha Abramsky

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Sep 25, Rebekka Istrail rated it it was amazing Shelves: Reading actually listening to Dreams from My Father first helped me to put Abramsky's work in context. Abramsky appears to do an impressive job piecing together the influences on Obama's thinking.

Also, I found the references that Abramsky uses, particularly those on strategies for social and political organizing, to be thought-provoking. I am currently interested in workplace structure and the transmission of ideas and development of a culture within the workplace. I plan to look further into Reading actually listening to Dreams from My Father first helped me to put Abramsky's work in context.

I plan to look further into some of this book's references to help me in this new area of interest. Exactly what the title promises: Sadly, this book was published at the beginning of his first Presidential term and it was constantly disturbing to contrast his high level of intelligence, competence and foresight to that our gag 45th President.

Jul 10, Milton added it. This book is not a biography of the President. Journalist Sasha Abramsky even without having gotten an interview with Obama, is able to build a perfil of the person who went from community organizer in Chicago to the main entrance in the White House. How he did manage to handle all racial disadvantages?

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"Never has the world needed strong and wise American leadership more than it does now. Abramsky's eminently readable description of Obama's personal gifts . Inside Obama's Brain. “Never has the world needed strong and wise American leadership more than it does now. Abramsky's eminently readable description of .

How without have been living among powerful people and without strong politician roots he still managed to get into the Oval Office? Those questions are responded in this book. He had Peter Drucker This book is not a biography of the President. He had Peter Drucker and Jerry Kellman as his tutors. Dec 24, kyle rated it it was ok. This book had lots of interesting examples from Obama's rise to power of how he learned to be the man he is, but it also tends to be a bit repetitive and the author clearly thinks Obama is the definition of perfect, which can be a bit annoying at times.

Jul 30, Minah rated it liked it. It's a very Obama side book so you cannot see dark side of him.

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But what the most impressive thing from him is that Obama is both a pragmatist and an idealist. He's driven by ideals, but he doesn't want to keep ideals themselves. He wants to make ideals happen out there.

Diana Nguyen rated it it was ok Jan 12, Jen rated it liked it Feb 10, Kevin rated it really liked it Sep 17, Gustavo Adolfo rated it did not like it Mar 02, Ibrahim rated it liked it Apr 10, Willian rated it it was ok Jul 03, Eko Novi rated it liked it Jul 28, Jan 17, SeaShore marked it as to-read. Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky interviewed close to one hundred of Obama's current and former friends, colleagues, classmates, teachers, staff, mentors, basketball buddies, fellow Chicago activists, media consultants, editors, and even The blurb: His book is "Jumping at shadows Robert Christian rated it really liked it Feb 20, Nabila Budayana rated it liked it Jan 18, It is a decision that will likely be debated for years to come.

Can a president presiding over a war -- no matter how necessary the fight may be, no matter how many months of deliberations preceded the decision to increase America's on the ground presence -- simultaneously be a Nobel peace laureate?

Should sitting leaders be eligible for the prize, or might it make more sense to exclude them from consideration until after their term in office is complete and their legacy more fully rounded? Frankly, if I had my druthers, I'd rewrite the rules of the nominating process to exclude those in leadership positions from having their names put forward. That said, Obama's peace prize is, in reality, serving as a focal point for a host of other, broader critiques. If the president weren't in Oslo today, he'd still be dealing with this chorus of criticism.

In a way, President Obama these days seems damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, a voice of moderation in a corrosively shrill, partisan political milieu. He is either a purveyor of big government or a ditherer who won't spend enough to truly stimulate the economy. He is either a week-kneed, radical internationalist intent on traveling the globe to apologize for past American misdeeds; or he is a war-mongering imperialist gleefully increasing the country's military boot-prints in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is either a socialist determined to bring down the American way of life through takeovers of failing car companies and other impertinent interventions in the market; or he is a vassal of high-finance unwilling to help the little man.

And, as the debates around climate change unfold in Copenhagen this week, he is either a mad, green fundamentalist or a corporate lackey smilingly administering band-aids to a crisis that mandates radical surgery. To me, very little of this hyperbolic rhetoric, on either the left or the right, has substance.

Yes, the country is enraged by the degree of economic hurt we're living through; and, yes, the times are so laced with uncertainty, both domestically and in the international arena, that any political leader would have to traverse minefields on a daily basis. But none of that means that Obama has abandoned, or betrayed, his fundamental political values.

And, at least in part, that's because his values, and his political goals, while strong and ambitious, aren't precisely what many assumed they were back when he was a candidate rather than a leader. In researching and writing my book, Inside Obama's Brain , which is being released today by Penguin , I talked to well over one hundred people who know, and have worked with, Barack Obama over the years.

His soul, his heart, is utopian; but his brain is actually rather policy wonkish. Obama's rhetoric about "change" is sincere; he wants to leave a large institutional legacy and he is passionate about bringing the voices of the voiceless into the halls of power. But, at the same time, he is by no stretch of the imagination a revolutionary; he has never wanted to tear down, or allow to collapse under its own weight, the existing political and economic system -- hence his willingness to spend a king's ransom to keep the banking system from falling into the abyss during his first months in office.

Inside Obama's Brain

Moreover, like all skilled politicians, Obama know that compromise is often the grease that keeps the machine running. He knows, said his state senate colleague and poker-night buddy Denny Jacobs, "when to accept half the hog.

To my mind that very blend of pragmatism and idealism is one of the character traits that make him so compelling. We might not all like all aspects of the health care reform that's shaping up, but when the history books are written, Obama will likely go down as the president who managed to achieve what a host of others had failed to do: We might not like all the compromises around climate change policy, but, again, he is the first president not only to prioritize the problem, but also to look for institutional solutions to it.

We might not like all of his military decisions, but he's going to ultimately negotiate some very important nuclear arms reduction treaties with Russia. Slowly, but measurably, the Obama administration is changing some of the fundamental ways we work as a society and as a great power.