It’s been a while since I posted a book review here. It’s not that I did not start reading one, but it took time to finish the one I picked. I had chosen a humongous book named “A Promised Land” by Barack Obama. Its 800 pages of written content as hardcover or 29 hours as an audible audiobook requires real dedication from you. For me, it took my reading schedule the entire March to finish!
Naturally, the first thought came to my mind when I heard the title of God’s promise on the land to Abraham and his descendants. Although Obama covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a chapter, the book is not about that promised land in the Middle East.
Anyway, my verdict is that this is a must-read and an excellent addition to your personal library. Despite its length, it does not warrant laborious reading; it literally reads on its own – very beautifully written and well narrated. You will like it depending on how much you are interested in world politics and economics. Additionally, if you are a Democrat, you might get goosebumps going through a few specific chapters. It’s an understatement if I say Obama is a fantastic orator. He will never let you get bored while you are at it.
I personally loved it and would reread it sometime in future.
The book covers Obama’s political career leading up to the mid-term election. I believe the subsequent topics will be covered in his next book. That is the reason you would not hear him talk about Modi, but you would about Manmohan, Sonia and Rahul.
Also, the book covers the political and economic part of his precedency rather than his personal life. Michelle, Melia, and Sasha appear very infrequently, just about a few paragraphs, not more than he was absolutely obligated to write. Or perhaps he wanted us to buy Michelle’s book to learn the other side of the story. I am not falling for that – that’s another 19 hours right there. Even though the first couple of chapters cover his childhood leading up to his political career, it seems it was inserted for the benefit of one Donald Trump, who had challenged Obama’s birth origin and Americanness.
Overall, the content takes a frank tone and is superbly detailed (29 hours, duh!!), leading you to wonder how he could remember all these details with such vivid descriptions.
Anyway, these are the chapters that resonated well with me.
- The visits to the Middle East and their ever-complicated politics. Obama calls a spade a spade without having an obligation to ignore the elephant in the room.
- Fascinating topic on Nuclear disarmament and Iran.
- The climate bill and carbon cuts and how he blackmailed BRIC leaders into the Paris Agreement (A little American hypocrisy here)
- The Greek Euro crisis
- BP deep-sea oil leak crisis
- The Birth-er debate and how he handled the Donald trump campaign against him.
- The Middle Eastern conflict – Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, etc.
There are several topics that failed to convince me.
- How picking up a fight across the world may be wrong, including bombing them.
- What liberal democratic support to the repressive regime, including the autocracies, is still OK.
- How Hilary is correct, and Palin is an idiot.
- Subprime crises and his defiance of bailing out the Banks and why no banks have been brought to justice.
The book ends with a very well-narrated story on the manhunt of Osama bin Laden. Probably, Obama considered this as the singularly most significant achievement of his career as president, hence, all the emphasis on the almost-fiction-like chapter.
I will be waiting for the next book and work. I love to hear from the horse’s mouth on:
- Obama care – his view on socializing the medicine.
- Trump – election and transition
- Modi wave in India
- China & the tariff war
- Diminishing free speech on American University campuses
- Charlie Hebdo – maybe?
- Raise of Antifa and PC culture.
Let’s see. Meanwhile, please go buy this book; it is worth every penny.
The Bach 
Obama was a great president
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It’s Americans go tell 🙂
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I must read this one I hope it has high sense of humor just like dreams from my father😌
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I have not read any other by him, but this one certainly has what you are looking for.
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How did Xtian Europe embrace Nazism as their new faith in God?
The slaughter of European Jewry under the leadership of the Nazis, known as the Shoah, merits a precedent. Xtian apologists for Pope Pius XII, they wish to declare this detestable war criminal a ‘Saint’. An idea perhaps comparable to Aquinas’s theological doctrine that equates the concept of indulgences, ((the Catholic corruption which so offended Martin Luther)) as a way to give some concrete expression to the mythical body of Christ, also referred in catholic circles as the communion of the saints…the sacrament of reconciliation.
By the 13th Century, Rome had established Canon Law as the basis of ‘pastorial care’. Alas the rhetoric of those barbaric times conceals the facts on the ground. Between 1208 to 1244, Pope Innocent III organized the mass murder of the peaceful ‘heretics of the Languedoc’ of Southern France, as well as the the Fourth Council of the Lateran, which devised the theological dogma which explained how the sacrament of the Eucharist becomes the actual blood and body of Christ. Thereafter began the horrors of the ‘blood libel’ whereby Xtians justified repeated pogroms, and forced expulsions of refugee Jewish populations across Europe.
The Lateran Council stands as the high-water mark of the medieval papacy. Its political and ecclesiastical decisions endured down to the Council of Trent (1545 to 1563) and beyond, while modern historiography has deemed it the most significant papal assembly of the Later Middle Ages. The viciousness and detestable arrogance practiced by Rome against the ‘heretics’ of Languedoc, directly equates and compares to the Nazi SS. The Cathars alternative views about Jesus, justified – in the mind of Pope Innocent III – their mass genocide. To this day, no European Court has ever condemned the Catholic Church for this genocide which serves as a precedent for the Shoah.
The concealed kabbala of Rabbi Akiva’s פרדס logic system greatly troubled Jewish rabbinic leaders. From the 4th Century, perhaps to the present day, Rome has sought to prevent its adherents from taking up secret knowledge. Jewish religious authorities likewise made knowledge of Rabbi Akiva’s kabbala an esoteric concealed wisdom. By the time of the Rambam, the kabbala of Rabbi Akiva had become almost a completely lost methodology of learning. The Church stood against the common man learning to read the Bible for himself. It sought to limit this secret knowledge as a monopoly controlled by its priests. But even the privileged priests, the Church sought likewise to limit their knowledge to a restricted and controlled study. Late in the 4th Century the Church limited Biblical investigation restricted to the Vulgate translation.
The Church evil eye toward competitive knowledge caused Rome to conceal all the ancient Greek texts on philosophy and mathematics. Jewish rabbinic authorities, in their turn, concealed the kabbala of Rabbi Akiva from almost all Jews who studied the Torah. This annual retentive attempt to regulate and control all human knowledge directly contributed and caused the Dark Ages in Europe. Society requires a working logic system, and the despised Jews could not, and must not, expose our treasured Oral Torah logic system to the hostile enemy Church. Independent thinking people, as seen from the Church perspective, they don’t pay taxes, they’re difficult to control, and they most definitely do not require the services of a priest. As seen from the perspective of stateless Jewish refugee rabbinic leaders: independent thinking people threaten to cause the Church to unilaterally expel Jewish communities from European countries.
The pivotal first council of Nicea, convened in 325 by Constantine I formulated Xstian Trinity doctrine, the Church voted out the Gnostic Xstian doctrine – the esoteric Aryan heresy. This theology denied the Trinity Godhead to Jesus. The Aryan heresy, basically agreed with Mohammad and called Jesus a mystical prophet. Aryanism compares to Muslim Unitarian theologies. The esoteric religion of Hitlerism, the one true Kristianity of the White Race! It compares Hitler to Jesus, both men being mystical prophets.
Aryan Kristianity, the Revelation of the God-men, the long-awaited unveiling of the SS Sons of Adolf Hitler, the Revelation on earth of the power and glory of the Aryan God. What begins as Unitarianism terminates in Paganism. The Council of Nicaea condemned Aryan theology; the Catholics, affirmed the full Godhead of Jesus. The ‘barbarian invasions’ of Rome, combined with the Muslim destruction of the Byzantine Empire, effectively terminated the Aryan heresy, till the 2nd coming of Hitler and the Nazis.
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