The Obamas [Paperback]

Now with an updated preface

When Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, he also won a long-running debate with Michelle. Contrary to her fears, politics now seemed like a worthwhile, even noble pursuit. Together they exuded promise and possibility and planned a White House that would be as normal and sane as possible.

Then inauguration came.

Jodi Kantor takes us inside the White House as Michelle and Barack Obama begin their transformation into President and First Lady. Filled with insight, surprising behind-the-scenes detail, and stories that never made headlines, it is a revelatory story of personal history on the political stage.

With a new preface surveying their post-White House future, Jodi Kantor'sThe Obamasilluminates the extraordinary partnership behind a historic presidency.
Jodi Kantor began her journalism career by dropping out of Harvard Law School to join Slate.com in 1998. Four years later, she became the Arts & Leisure editor of theNew York Times. She has been covering the Obamas since 2007, and though she is a Washington correspondent for the newspaper, she lives in Brooklyn with her family. Jodi's reporting with Meghan Twohey on Harvey Weinstein won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She can be followed attwitter.com/jodikantor. 'The strengths and challenges of our marriage don't change because we move to a different address,' Michelle Obama told Jodi Kantor early on. How though did those strengths and challenges evolve in the White House? What did they signal to the rest of the country and, how did they shape policy? An intimate, arresting view of a formidable couple and, especially, of a transformative First Lady, one who may have taught us more than we yet realize.
Stacy Schiff, author ofThe Witches
A meticulous reporter, Kantor is attuned to the nuance of small gestures, the import of unspoken trutlc)