I must admit that I was neutral about Barack Obama at the beginning of his presidency. I became a fan during his eight years in office. My admiration grew even stronger during the tenure of his immediate successor. And now that I've listened to this lengthy memoir? Wow. The man is nothing but impressive.

At 751 pages and 28.5 narrated hours (on 28 CDs), this book covers a lot of ground. But not as much as you may expect. Obama moves quickly over his younger days, likely assuming that interested readers will have already learned this part of his story from Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race & Inheritance (Crown, 1995) and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Crown, 2006). (I recommend reading at least the first one, before you start here.) Professionally, we follow Obama from his days as a Chicago-based community outreach worker (1980s) and as a lawyer and law school professor (1990s), then on to Illinois state senator (1997-2004), to U.S. senator (2005-2008) and as a presidential candidate (2007-2008). We get caught up in the intricacies and machinations involved in such a campaign: first against fellow Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (how soon we forget!), and then finally against Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin. And Obama wins! The whirlwind of dreams and preparations turns into the stark reality of everyday business. And now we accompany him through his daily duties and responsibilities at the White House, but only for a few years. This memoir ends during the spring of 2011.

Barack Obama is naturally an accomplished writer and speaker. And he knows how to craft a good story and how to lead it to a dramatic conclusion. One of his bad habits, he tells us early on, is his tendency to launch into lengthy explanations about his topics, especially when his audience is expecting a shorter summary. Which explains the thickness of this book and its case of CDs. But his accounts show us the little details in the way things work for a president. We're getting civics, history and foreign policy lessons from an ultimate practitioner here. He either keeps an itemized journal, or he consulted old documents and video footage. Maybe both. I can't imagine that he could have remembered everything well enough to just dive into these waters without some prompts.

As president, he finds that the problems that land on his desk don't have easy solutions. If they did, someone else down the line would have come up with them. And in just his first three years alone, he faced a number of challenges: the 2008 financial crisis; the health care package; the H1N1 virus and a possible nationwide pandemic; a global banking crisis; the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico; the appearance of the Tea Party; increasing fallouts from climate change; the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; relations with Russia, China and the United Nations; and the search for Osama bin Laden. This isn't just history -- it's a trip down memory lane for us, too, as we can remember what we were doing on the other side of the desk. We're familiar with the framework, because we lived through it. Now we learn the nitty-gritties.

And we hear some echoes in the background, too. For even though Obama planned to end the war in Afghanistan and to take the very best measures to thwart climate change, both of these challenges still remain for the 46th president, Joe Biden, to handle. He sat in on Obama's strategy meetings about Afghanistan. As I listened to this book in April 2021, Biden announced a process that would get American troops out of there. Much that happened then for Obama has ramifications for what's going on now with Biden. And it was easy for Obama to bring up these recurring issues and situations for us here. Suddenly, it's not history. It's the present day.

What we also discover is just how much of a "people person" Obama is. For many of the individuals who step into his circle -- from campaign workers to cabinet members, from foreign leaders to everyday Americans -- he gives us a sentence or two about their backgrounds, and another one describing their general appearance. He's made a concerted effort to learn more about each person, and he shares this knowledge with us. There's also his purple folder: the daily dose of 10 representative letters or messages that his office has gotten in the last 24 hours. Ten letters that he reads and responds to. A leader who cares about people! What a concept!

Hindsight is 20/20. Or rather, 2020. We revisit Obama's administration knowing all too well what happens in the four years afterward. And he surely wrote the book with that future in mind. He says that when George W. Bush invited him to the White House before inauguration day, the man was gracious and funny and nice. And Obama left thinking he'd like to do the same someday for his own successor. Well, we'll have to wait until the sequel to find out more about that encounter.

One downside to listening to the audiobook is that if you drift off during some of the political wheeling and dealings -- because you suddenly have to concentrate on driving, during your commute -- you can't easily go back and "read" the same paragraph over again. I would have re-read some of them, perhaps more than once. With the CDs, I just let Obama talk, figuring either that the part wasn't crucial to the whole story, or that I would understand everything in a few minutes.

The second downside is that you don't get to see the 32 pages of photos. Since our libraries haven't yet reopened for browsing, I plan to walk into a local bookstore and peek inside a hardcover edition. I want to check out what I missed.

Shortly before Barack Obama left the White House, he appeared in a dream I had one night. I'm not sure why he showed up, unless it was for me to tell him that I had read Dreams from My Father, and that he was a terrific writer. I tried to be casual in our conversation and to not be starstruck. And as a writer myself, I flat-out asked him, "You're gonna write about all of this someday, aren't you?" He nodded.

I continued. "But you're not going to be able to tell us EVERYTHING, are you?" He shook his head slowly, and a slight look of pain crossed his face. I have to say, that after listening to this book, I cannot imagine what tiny tidbits he could have held back.

A Promised Land offers time well spent, whether listening or reading. You're sure to learn more than you ever thought possible about our 44th president, and also about American history and politics from 2006-2011. By the time you digest all that you've gleaned here, perhaps Obama will have finished writing the sequel.