読書家なオバマ氏の著作だけあって、他の政治家による自伝と比較しても文学的な表現で綴られている。大部な著作であることも相まって、日本人読者にとっては若干ハードルが高いかもしれないが、読む価値はある本である。Kindle 版ならタップすればすぐに字義を確認できるから、物おじせずにぜひチャレンジしてほしい。続編も出る予定だから、総ページ数は全巻で 1,500 ページほどになりそうであるが、読みがいはあるから苦にはならないはず。Audible 版も有名人の著作としては珍しく、全編をオバマ氏本人が読み上げてくれるから、お勧めである。
この自伝ではオバマ元大統領のどこまでも誠実な人柄と、アメリカにおける党派間対立の激しさがよくわかる。トランプ氏が党派間対立に便乗・利用したのに対し、オバマ氏はひたすら誠実に向き合おうとしていた。オバマ氏は上院議員一期のみ、トランプ氏も国政での経験はほとんどなく、両者ともに既存政治に新たな視点で向き合うことができる立場にあったが、党派間対立への姿勢が対極的なものとなったのは興味深い。
両者の姿勢の違いは演説 ( Youtube などで公開されている) に如実に表れているが、オバマ氏は野次馬や反対意見を声高に唱える人々にも誠実に向き合おうとしており、この自伝でも真摯な姿勢は一貫しているのがわかる。大統領にまでなった人がなぜここまで誠実でいられるのか、不思議に思ってしまうくらいである。だが残念ながらオバマ氏の真摯な姿勢が、政治的に報われることは少なかったのかもしれない。
どれだけ歩み寄ろうとしても耳を貸さない共和党議員も、政治闘争に腐心する民主党議員も、五十歩百歩なのではあるが、パーティザンディバイドの反対側から歩み寄ろうとする議員も確かに存在した。有名なのは一回目の大統領選で争ったジョン・マケイン氏であるが、表立って共和党のパーティーラインから外れた主張をすることができたのは、古参の有力議員であったが故だろう。若手の有望株の中にもオバマ氏の融和的姿勢に理解を示す議員はいたのだが、RINO (Republican in Name Only) と指弾され落選の憂き目をみるなど、深淵のごとく広がる党派間の分断を前にして、志が打ち砕かれていく過程を読むのは辛いものがあった。
"Too cerebral" などと言われたオバマ氏の姿勢が、アンチテーゼとしてのトランプ台頭に繋がった面はあるだろう。トランプ氏はいわゆる「オバマ・ケア」などオバマ氏の遺産を破壊することを至上命題としていた。オバマ氏の誠実さはなかなか報われることがなかったが、1月のバイデン新大統領誕生により、オバマ氏が蒔いた融和への種が芽吹くことを期待したい。
なお元 FLOTUS であるミシェル・オバマ氏の著作『Becoming』(www.amazon.co.jp/dp/1524763136/)はベストセラーとなっており、ホワイトハウスでの生活を違う視点から活写していて中々おもしろかった。この自伝でもミシェル・オバマ氏についてたびたび言及しているが、興味を持ったら彼女の著作を読んでみるのも良いだろう。FLOTUS の日常に興味を持つ人だけではなく、BLM に冷笑的視線を向ける人にもぜひ読んで欲しい。元 POTUS バラク・オバマ氏は恐妻家として知られており、著作の売り上げでもすでに白旗を上げているようである。氏の家庭内における地位向上と我々の教養のために、『A Promised Land』もぜひ手に取って読んで欲しい。
紙の本の価格: | ¥7,278 |
割引: | ¥ 5,078 (70%) |
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Kindle 価格: | ¥2,200 (税込) |
獲得ポイント: | 22ポイント (1%) |
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A Promised Land (English Edition) Kindle版
A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire
In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.
Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.
A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.
This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire
In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office.
Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.
A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.
This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.
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商品の説明
メディア掲載レビューほか
“A powerful book with lots of insights into great leadership.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes
“Barack Obama is as fine a writer as they come. . . . [A Promised Land] is nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid. . . . The story will continue in the second volume, but Barack Obama has already illuminated a pivotal moment in American history, and how America changed while also remaining unchanged.”—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times Book Review --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
“Barack Obama is as fine a writer as they come. . . . [A Promised Land] is nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid. . . . The story will continue in the second volume, but Barack Obama has already illuminated a pivotal moment in American history, and how America changed while also remaining unchanged.”—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times Book Review --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
著者について
Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the author of two previous New York Times bestselling books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, and the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha. --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
レビュー
“A powerful book with lots of insights into great leadership.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes
“Barack Obama is as fine a writer as they come. . . . [A Promised Land] is nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid. . . . The story will continue in the second volume, but Barack Obama has already illuminated a pivotal moment in American history, and how America changed while also remaining unchanged.”—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times Book Review --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
“Barack Obama is as fine a writer as they come. . . . [A Promised Land] is nearly always pleasurable to read, sentence by sentence, the prose gorgeous in places, the detail granular and vivid. . . . The story will continue in the second volume, but Barack Obama has already illuminated a pivotal moment in American history, and how America changed while also remaining unchanged.”—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times Book Review --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
抜粋
Preface
I began writing this book shortly after the end of my presidency—after Michelle and I had boarded Air Force One for the last time and traveled west for a long-deferred break. The mood on the plane was bittersweet. Both of us were drained, physically and emotionally, not only by the labors of the previous eight years but by the unexpected results of an election in which someone diametrically opposed to everything we stood for had been chosen as my successor. Still, having run our leg of the race to completion, we took satisfaction in knowing that we’d done our very best—and that however much I’d fallen short as president, whatever projects I’d hoped but failed to accomplish, the country was in better shape now than it had been when I’d started. For a month, Michelle and I slept late, ate leisurely dinners, went for long walks, swam in the ocean, took stock, replenished our friendship, rediscovered our love, and planned for a less eventful but hopefully no less satisfying second act. And by the time I was ready to get back to work and sat down with a pen and yellow pad (I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness), I had a clear outline of the book in my head.
First and foremost, I hoped to give an honest rendering of my time in office—not just a historical record of key events that happened on my watch and important figures with whom I interacted but also an account of some of the political, economic, and cultural crosscurrents that helped determine the challenges my administration faced and the choices my team and I made in response. Where possible, I wanted to offer readers a sense of what it’s like to be the president of the United States; I wanted to pull the curtain back a bit and remind people that, for all its power and pomp, the presidency is still just a job and our federal government is a human enterprise like any other, and the men and women who work in the White House experience the same daily mix of satisfaction, disappointment, office friction, screw-ups, and small triumphs as the rest of their fellow citizens. Finally, I wanted to tell a more personal story that might inspire young people considering a life of public service: how my career in politics really started with a search for a place to fit in, a way to explain the different strands of my mixed-up heritage, and how it was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.
I figured I could do all that in maybe five hundred pages. I expected to be done in a year.
It’s fair to say that the writing process didn’t go exactly as I’d planned. Despite my best intentions, the book kept growing in length and scope—the reason why I eventually decided to break it into two volumes. I’m painfully aware that a more gifted writer could have found a way to tell the same story with greater brevity (after all, my home office in the White House sat right next to the Lincoln Bedroom, where a signed copy of the 272-word Gettysburg Address rests beneath a glass case). But each time that I sat down to write—whether it was to describe the early phases of my campaign, or my administration’s handling of the financial crisis, or negotiations with the Russians on nuclear arms control, or the forces that led to the Arab Spring—I found my mind resisting a simple linear narrative. Often, I felt obliged to provide context for the decisions I and others had made, and I didn’t want to relegate that background to footnotes or endnotes (I hate footnotes and endnotes). I discovered that I couldn’t always explain my motivations just by referencing reams of economic data or recalling an exhaustive Oval Office briefing, for they’d been shaped by a conversation I’d had with a stranger on the campaign trail, a visit to a military hospital, or a childhood lesson I’d received years earlier from my mother. Repeatedly my memories would toss up seemingly incidental details (trying to find a discreet location to grab an evening smoke; my staff and I having a laugh while playing cards aboard Air Force One) that captured, in a way the public record never could, my lived experience during the eight years I spent in the White House.
Beyond the struggle to put words on a page, what I didn’t fully anticipate was the way events would unfold during the three and a half years after that last flight on Air Force One. As I sit here, the country remains in the grips of a global pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis, with more than 178,000 Americans dead, businesses shuttered, and millions of people out of work. Across the nation, people from all walks of life have poured into the streets to protest the deaths of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of the police. Perhaps most troubling of all, our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis—a crisis rooted in a fundamental contest between two opposing visions of what America is and what it should be; a crisis that has left the body politic divided, angry, and mistrustful, and has allowed for an ongoing breach of institutional norms, procedural safeguards, and the adherence to basic facts that both Republicans and Democrats once took for granted.
This contest is not new, of course. In many ways, it has defined the American experience. It’s embedded in founding documents that could simultaneously proclaim all men equal and yet count a slave as three-fifths of a man. It finds expression in our earliest court opinions, as when the chief justice of the Supreme Court bluntly explains to Native Americans that their tribe’s rights to convey property aren’t enforceable since the court of the conqueror has no capacity to recognize the just claims of the conquered. It’s a contest that’s been fought on the fields of Gettysburg and Appomattox but also in the halls of Congress, on a bridge in Selma, across the vineyards of California, and down the streets of New York—a contest fought by soldiers but more often by union organizers, suffragists, Pullman porters, student leaders, waves of immigrants, and LGBTQ activists, armed with nothing more than picket signs, pamphlets, or a pair of marching shoes. At the heart of this long-running battle is a simple question: Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals? If so, do we really believe that our notions of self-government and individual freedom, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, apply to everybody? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not in statute, to reserving those things for a privileged few?
I recognize that there are those who believe that it’s time to discard the myth—that an examination of America’s past and an even cursory glance at today’s headlines show that this nation’s ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to be complicit in a game that was rigged from the start. And I confess that there have been times during the course of writing this book, as I’ve reflected on my presidency and all that’s happened since, when I’ve had to ask myself whether I was too tempered in speaking the truth as I saw it, too cautious in either word or deed, convinced as I was that by appealing to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature I stood a greater chance of leading us in the direction of the America we’ve been promised.
I don’t know. What I can say for certain is that I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind. For I’m convinced that the pandemic we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but collide. In that world—of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity—we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice— to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.
The jury’s still out. By the time this first volume is published, a U.S. election will have taken place, and while I believe the stakes could not be higher, I also know that no single election will settle the matter. If I remain hopeful, it’s because I’ve learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation, whose conviction in the equal worth of all people seems to come as second nature, and who insist on making real those principles that their parents and teachers told them were true but perhaps never fully believed themselves. More than anyone, this book is for those young people—an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us.
August 2020 --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
I began writing this book shortly after the end of my presidency—after Michelle and I had boarded Air Force One for the last time and traveled west for a long-deferred break. The mood on the plane was bittersweet. Both of us were drained, physically and emotionally, not only by the labors of the previous eight years but by the unexpected results of an election in which someone diametrically opposed to everything we stood for had been chosen as my successor. Still, having run our leg of the race to completion, we took satisfaction in knowing that we’d done our very best—and that however much I’d fallen short as president, whatever projects I’d hoped but failed to accomplish, the country was in better shape now than it had been when I’d started. For a month, Michelle and I slept late, ate leisurely dinners, went for long walks, swam in the ocean, took stock, replenished our friendship, rediscovered our love, and planned for a less eventful but hopefully no less satisfying second act. And by the time I was ready to get back to work and sat down with a pen and yellow pad (I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness), I had a clear outline of the book in my head.
First and foremost, I hoped to give an honest rendering of my time in office—not just a historical record of key events that happened on my watch and important figures with whom I interacted but also an account of some of the political, economic, and cultural crosscurrents that helped determine the challenges my administration faced and the choices my team and I made in response. Where possible, I wanted to offer readers a sense of what it’s like to be the president of the United States; I wanted to pull the curtain back a bit and remind people that, for all its power and pomp, the presidency is still just a job and our federal government is a human enterprise like any other, and the men and women who work in the White House experience the same daily mix of satisfaction, disappointment, office friction, screw-ups, and small triumphs as the rest of their fellow citizens. Finally, I wanted to tell a more personal story that might inspire young people considering a life of public service: how my career in politics really started with a search for a place to fit in, a way to explain the different strands of my mixed-up heritage, and how it was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.
I figured I could do all that in maybe five hundred pages. I expected to be done in a year.
It’s fair to say that the writing process didn’t go exactly as I’d planned. Despite my best intentions, the book kept growing in length and scope—the reason why I eventually decided to break it into two volumes. I’m painfully aware that a more gifted writer could have found a way to tell the same story with greater brevity (after all, my home office in the White House sat right next to the Lincoln Bedroom, where a signed copy of the 272-word Gettysburg Address rests beneath a glass case). But each time that I sat down to write—whether it was to describe the early phases of my campaign, or my administration’s handling of the financial crisis, or negotiations with the Russians on nuclear arms control, or the forces that led to the Arab Spring—I found my mind resisting a simple linear narrative. Often, I felt obliged to provide context for the decisions I and others had made, and I didn’t want to relegate that background to footnotes or endnotes (I hate footnotes and endnotes). I discovered that I couldn’t always explain my motivations just by referencing reams of economic data or recalling an exhaustive Oval Office briefing, for they’d been shaped by a conversation I’d had with a stranger on the campaign trail, a visit to a military hospital, or a childhood lesson I’d received years earlier from my mother. Repeatedly my memories would toss up seemingly incidental details (trying to find a discreet location to grab an evening smoke; my staff and I having a laugh while playing cards aboard Air Force One) that captured, in a way the public record never could, my lived experience during the eight years I spent in the White House.
Beyond the struggle to put words on a page, what I didn’t fully anticipate was the way events would unfold during the three and a half years after that last flight on Air Force One. As I sit here, the country remains in the grips of a global pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis, with more than 178,000 Americans dead, businesses shuttered, and millions of people out of work. Across the nation, people from all walks of life have poured into the streets to protest the deaths of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of the police. Perhaps most troubling of all, our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis—a crisis rooted in a fundamental contest between two opposing visions of what America is and what it should be; a crisis that has left the body politic divided, angry, and mistrustful, and has allowed for an ongoing breach of institutional norms, procedural safeguards, and the adherence to basic facts that both Republicans and Democrats once took for granted.
This contest is not new, of course. In many ways, it has defined the American experience. It’s embedded in founding documents that could simultaneously proclaim all men equal and yet count a slave as three-fifths of a man. It finds expression in our earliest court opinions, as when the chief justice of the Supreme Court bluntly explains to Native Americans that their tribe’s rights to convey property aren’t enforceable since the court of the conqueror has no capacity to recognize the just claims of the conquered. It’s a contest that’s been fought on the fields of Gettysburg and Appomattox but also in the halls of Congress, on a bridge in Selma, across the vineyards of California, and down the streets of New York—a contest fought by soldiers but more often by union organizers, suffragists, Pullman porters, student leaders, waves of immigrants, and LGBTQ activists, armed with nothing more than picket signs, pamphlets, or a pair of marching shoes. At the heart of this long-running battle is a simple question: Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals? If so, do we really believe that our notions of self-government and individual freedom, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, apply to everybody? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not in statute, to reserving those things for a privileged few?
I recognize that there are those who believe that it’s time to discard the myth—that an examination of America’s past and an even cursory glance at today’s headlines show that this nation’s ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to be complicit in a game that was rigged from the start. And I confess that there have been times during the course of writing this book, as I’ve reflected on my presidency and all that’s happened since, when I’ve had to ask myself whether I was too tempered in speaking the truth as I saw it, too cautious in either word or deed, convinced as I was that by appealing to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature I stood a greater chance of leading us in the direction of the America we’ve been promised.
I don’t know. What I can say for certain is that I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind. For I’m convinced that the pandemic we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but collide. In that world—of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity—we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish. And so the world watches America—the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice— to see if our experiment in democracy can work. To see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed.
The jury’s still out. By the time this first volume is published, a U.S. election will have taken place, and while I believe the stakes could not be higher, I also know that no single election will settle the matter. If I remain hopeful, it’s because I’ve learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation, whose conviction in the equal worth of all people seems to come as second nature, and who insist on making real those principles that their parents and teachers told them were true but perhaps never fully believed themselves. More than anyone, this book is for those young people—an invitation to once again remake the world, and to bring about, through hard work, determination, and a big dose of imagination, an America that finally aligns with all that is best in us.
August 2020 --このテキストは、kindle_edition版に関連付けられています。
登録情報
- ASIN : B08GJZFBYV
- 出版社 : Crown (2020/11/17)
- 発売日 : 2020/11/17
- 言語 : 英語
- ファイルサイズ : 176880 KB
- Text-to-Speech(テキスト読み上げ機能) : 有効
- X-Ray : 有効
- Word Wise : 有効
- 付箋メモ : Kindle Scribeで
- 本の長さ : 753ページ
- Amazon 売れ筋ランキング: - 13,678位洋書 (洋書の売れ筋ランキングを見る)
- カスタマーレビュー:
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トップレビュー
上位レビュー、対象国: 日本
レビューのフィルタリング中に問題が発生しました。後でもう一度試してください。
2021年4月18日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
Very readable, moving from personal reflections, history 101, and in depth policy and political analysis.
2021年2月4日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
Precise events and sentiments are well described in detail.
2021年1月1日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
今年の2/16に日本版『約束の地 大統領回顧録Ⅰ』(上下)として刊行
されるのも知らずに背伸びをしすぎて衝動的にジャケット買いしてしまった1冊。
対峙するだけで何かしら気負いというか、緊張感があります。すんなり読めて
解釈できるのがスタンダードなのでしょうね。
(喜ばしいことですが、日本語版も買う破目になりそうです。)
時事的な書籍ですが、オブジェにもなりますしインテリアにもなり、原著でオーラがあり
持ち物ステータスを満たしてくれる存在でもあります。700超と分厚くて唐突ですが『江藤淳は甦える』
クラスのサイズになって個人的には難易度も易しく無く敷居が高くなっており、ニュアンスが分からず
雰囲気だけ理解する形になってしまいますが、日本版を待ち切れずにトライしたい一般の方は本物に
触れる機会ですので是非の希望のある一冊となっております。
されるのも知らずに背伸びをしすぎて衝動的にジャケット買いしてしまった1冊。
対峙するだけで何かしら気負いというか、緊張感があります。すんなり読めて
解釈できるのがスタンダードなのでしょうね。
(喜ばしいことですが、日本語版も買う破目になりそうです。)
時事的な書籍ですが、オブジェにもなりますしインテリアにもなり、原著でオーラがあり
持ち物ステータスを満たしてくれる存在でもあります。700超と分厚くて唐突ですが『江藤淳は甦える』
クラスのサイズになって個人的には難易度も易しく無く敷居が高くなっており、ニュアンスが分からず
雰囲気だけ理解する形になってしまいますが、日本版を待ち切れずにトライしたい一般の方は本物に
触れる機会ですので是非の希望のある一冊となっております。
2021年1月18日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
オバマ氏は金融危機という異常事態が求めた「ワシントンやロビー活動に染まってない」「政府はこう機能すべきという概念を理解し、未曽有の金融危機を乗り越える若さがある」政治家でした。勿論父親がアフリカ人だったという人種的特徴もあるけど、国民の多くは経済立て直しを期待したと思います。
一方で家事もした普通の父親の面も垣間見られ、等身大の政治家の回顧録になっています。政治はきれいごとばかりじゃないはずだけど、最も国際法や政治理念に忠実な大統領だったんじゃないかと思います。
大学で政治学を履修する人には、是非読んでほしい一冊です。
一方で家事もした普通の父親の面も垣間見られ、等身大の政治家の回顧録になっています。政治はきれいごとばかりじゃないはずだけど、最も国際法や政治理念に忠実な大統領だったんじゃないかと思います。
大学で政治学を履修する人には、是非読んでほしい一冊です。
2021年4月2日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
メディアなどからの情報に基づいて自分が作り上げていたオバマ元大統領のイメージより、いい意味で違った印象を受ける書作です。日本人にとってはわかり難い大統領指名選挙や大統領選の流れなども概略つかめる内容です。今回は日本語版と英語版の両方を購入しました。日本語版の訳出で違和感のある表現部分は英語版の方で確認する様しています。お勧めだと思います。
2020年12月19日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
出版物の内容(コンテンツ)については既に世界中から(であろう)万単位の評価が寄せられているようだ。
なので当方は純粋に(?)CD形態という商品そのものを評価してみる。コンテンツの評価は他に譲るのでご寛恕願う。
とにかく、書籍のページ数を見ただけで途轍もない分量とわかる。
その“大長編”を、著者のオバマ氏自身が朗読、という。これだけでも音声を聴く価値は十分と思う。
ただ、CD版の商品解説欄から「寸法」の情報をコピペしてくると、次のようになっている。
寸法 : 14 x 6 x 14.3 cm
CDだから、縦横それぞれ14センチなのは、わかる。にしては厚みが“6センチ”・・・? なんか計算が合わない感じがする。
Audible 版情報によれば、音声分量は29時間余とのこと(オバマさん、お疲れさまです。実際、何日くらいを朗読期間に費やしたのでしょう?)。「 Unabridged版 」即ち「完全版」と表示されているからには、音声29時間分がCD化されているわけで・・・。
CD1枚には無圧縮で最大78分の音声が記録できる。が、そこまでギッチギチな収録にはなっていないだろう。仮に1枚60分平均として、28~30枚(!)になる計算。
日本で普通に売られているCDのケースは厚みが1センチだから、「6」のところは「30」くらいの数値でなければ不自然だ。実態はどうなっているか・・・?
届いた。
厚紙の三方函ケースに、厚みの違うソフトプラケースが2個、収められている。厚い方には「1~18」の、やや薄い方には「19~28」の、つまり「28枚でワンセット」のCDが、分けられて入っている。
28枚なら、14枚ずつに分ければ、とも思うが、同じ厚みだとどっちがどっちかわからなくなるから、これでいいのだろう。
開ける。
まるで生ディスクをスピンドルケース売りしているみたいに、CDの束を【剥き出しのまま】センターコアにガサッと突き刺した状態。
1枚ずつ取り出し、最後、つまり18枚目あるいは28枚目のCDを取り除けると、そこはソフトプラケース。日本製のスピンドルケース入りディスク商品は、大概、最下部に防護用の透明板を入れ、直にディスクの記録面とケースとが接触しないよう手配されているが・・・。
あやー・・・。
日本でこれだけのヴォリュームのCDセットを売るとなれば、せめてディスクを1枚ずつ不織布のエンヴェロープに収め、書籍か何かのようにパタパタとページ捲りできる、みたいな造作で収納されているものではないかと思うのだが。
なんともはや、いかにもアメリカらしい豪快さというか大雑把といえばいいのか。少しでもコストを下げる意味では合理的ともいえようが・・・。
・・・と思ってケースをよーく見ると、“ Made in the EU ”の表記。“US”じゃないんだ・・・やれやれ。
CDメディアを擦傷等から護り、丁寧に取り扱いたい向きは、保護板なら廃棄予定のスピンドルケースから持ってくるとか厚紙等で自作する、また、ケース代わりに不織布カバーを束買いしてくる、等々、自力でひと手間をかけるよりなかろう。
・・・もっとも、そこまで気を遣うくらいなら、媒体不要の Audible 版、即ちダウンロード音声を購入すればいいだけの話ではあるが。
書籍は、まだ前半部分のみ。後半も、CD商品は同等の仕様になるのだろうか。
なので当方は純粋に(?)CD形態という商品そのものを評価してみる。コンテンツの評価は他に譲るのでご寛恕願う。
とにかく、書籍のページ数を見ただけで途轍もない分量とわかる。
その“大長編”を、著者のオバマ氏自身が朗読、という。これだけでも音声を聴く価値は十分と思う。
ただ、CD版の商品解説欄から「寸法」の情報をコピペしてくると、次のようになっている。
寸法 : 14 x 6 x 14.3 cm
CDだから、縦横それぞれ14センチなのは、わかる。にしては厚みが“6センチ”・・・? なんか計算が合わない感じがする。
Audible 版情報によれば、音声分量は29時間余とのこと(オバマさん、お疲れさまです。実際、何日くらいを朗読期間に費やしたのでしょう?)。「 Unabridged版 」即ち「完全版」と表示されているからには、音声29時間分がCD化されているわけで・・・。
CD1枚には無圧縮で最大78分の音声が記録できる。が、そこまでギッチギチな収録にはなっていないだろう。仮に1枚60分平均として、28~30枚(!)になる計算。
日本で普通に売られているCDのケースは厚みが1センチだから、「6」のところは「30」くらいの数値でなければ不自然だ。実態はどうなっているか・・・?
届いた。
厚紙の三方函ケースに、厚みの違うソフトプラケースが2個、収められている。厚い方には「1~18」の、やや薄い方には「19~28」の、つまり「28枚でワンセット」のCDが、分けられて入っている。
28枚なら、14枚ずつに分ければ、とも思うが、同じ厚みだとどっちがどっちかわからなくなるから、これでいいのだろう。
開ける。
まるで生ディスクをスピンドルケース売りしているみたいに、CDの束を【剥き出しのまま】センターコアにガサッと突き刺した状態。
1枚ずつ取り出し、最後、つまり18枚目あるいは28枚目のCDを取り除けると、そこはソフトプラケース。日本製のスピンドルケース入りディスク商品は、大概、最下部に防護用の透明板を入れ、直にディスクの記録面とケースとが接触しないよう手配されているが・・・。
あやー・・・。
日本でこれだけのヴォリュームのCDセットを売るとなれば、せめてディスクを1枚ずつ不織布のエンヴェロープに収め、書籍か何かのようにパタパタとページ捲りできる、みたいな造作で収納されているものではないかと思うのだが。
なんともはや、いかにもアメリカらしい豪快さというか大雑把といえばいいのか。少しでもコストを下げる意味では合理的ともいえようが・・・。
・・・と思ってケースをよーく見ると、“ Made in the EU ”の表記。“US”じゃないんだ・・・やれやれ。
CDメディアを擦傷等から護り、丁寧に取り扱いたい向きは、保護板なら廃棄予定のスピンドルケースから持ってくるとか厚紙等で自作する、また、ケース代わりに不織布カバーを束買いしてくる、等々、自力でひと手間をかけるよりなかろう。
・・・もっとも、そこまで気を遣うくらいなら、媒体不要の Audible 版、即ちダウンロード音声を購入すればいいだけの話ではあるが。
書籍は、まだ前半部分のみ。後半も、CD商品は同等の仕様になるのだろうか。
他の国からのトップレビュー

Basit
5つ星のうち5.0
Good Read
2024年2月13日にカナダでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Arrived right on time and loved reading this book.

Rinara Silva
5つ星のうち5.0
avaliação
2023年12月18日にブラジルでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Sensacional, muito bom o livro.

José Ramón Gutiérrez V
5つ星のうち5.0
Interesante y ameno
2023年12月16日にメキシコでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Es muy interesante adentrarse en el mundo de una persona tan importante, y que sea de manera tan amena; recomiendo la versión en inglés, aporta mucho vocabulario útil

Desiree Nicola
5つ星のうち5.0
Very interesting
2023年10月20日にドイツでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
I was always fascinated by Barack Obama and this book confirmed it. Rating a biography is always difficult, but not in this case. He has a great writing style and an important and interesting story to tell.

Didi
5つ星のうち5.0
Mooi boek
2023年3月7日にオランダでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Fijn en mooi boek om te lezen