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Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years Audiobook
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Remember when presidents spoke in complete sentences instead of in unhinged tweets? David Litt does. In his comic, coming-of-age memoir, he takes us back to the Obama years – and charts a path forward in the age of Trump.
More than any other presidency, Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House were defined by young people – twenty-somethings who didn’t have much experience in politics (or anything else, for that matter), yet suddenly found themselves in the most high-stakes office building on earth. David Litt was one of those twenty-somethings. After graduating from college in 2008, he went straight to the Obama campaign. In 2011, he became one of the youngest White House speechwriters in history. Until leaving the White House in 2016, he wrote on topics from healthcare to climate change to criminal justice reform. As President Obama’s go-to comedy writer, he also took the lead on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the so-called “State of the Union of jokes.”
Now, in this refreshingly honest memoir, Litt brings us inside Obamaworld. With a humorists’ eye for detail, he describes what it’s like to accidentally trigger an international incident or nearly set a president’s hair aflame. He answers questions you never knew you had: Which White House men’s room is the classiest? What do you do when the commander in chief gets your name wrong? Where should you never, under any circumstances, change clothes on Air Force One? With nearly a decade of stories to tell, Litt makes clear that politics is completely, hopelessly absurd.
But it’s also important. For all the moments of chaos, frustration, and yes, disillusionment, Litt remains a believer in the words that first drew him to the Obama campaign: “People who love this country can change it.” In telling his own story, Litt sheds fresh light on his former boss’s legacy. And he argues that, despite the current political climate, the politics championed by Barack Obama will outlive the presidency of Donald Trump.
Full of hilarious stories and told in a truly original voice, Thanks, Obama is an exciting debut about what it means – personally, professionally, and politically – to grow up.
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“Wring[s] comedy, pathos, and a nation’s hope out of one man’s stumble through the halls of power. While the first half of the book is enjoyable, the second half is masterly, rising to a crescendo that is as rousing as, well, a particularly inspiring campaign speech.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“A thoughtful and funny account of life as a minnow surrounded by Washington’s self-important whales…Ranks with other classics from former White House speechwriters, such as Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw at the Revolution.”
— USA Today -
“Serve[s] as a more devastating indictment of the current administration than a campaign-style book ever could…Limber, funny, and illuminating.”
— New Republic -
"Will join the ranks of lasting works about the texture of political life and of coming-of-age accounts by staffers who grow up personally and politically at the same time.”
— Atlantic -
“Highly entertaining…Much more than a scrapbook of Beltway gossip and Obama idolatry.”
— Pacific Standard -
“A magnificent memoir…You’ll walk away with another kind of hope that’s needed now more than ever: the belief that a government can actually do some good.”
— Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author -
“By turns moving and hilarious, David Litt’s rollicking account of his journey from campaign field grunt to presidential speechwriter is an irresistible read.”
— David Axelrod, former senior advisor to Barack Obama and author of Believer: My Forty Years in Politics -
“Entertaining…Veering between tragedy and comedy, between self-doubt and hubris, Litt vividly recreates a period during which he saw his words sometimes become the words of a nation.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“For every White House men’s room anecdote or gee-whiz moment…Litt offers piercing assessments of the nature of our politics…President Obama’s running question to Litt was, ‘so, are we funny?’ Yes, they are—and insightful, too.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Awards
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An Esquire Magazine Best Book of the Year So Far
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New York Times bestseller
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Elle Magazine Pick
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Bustle Pick
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About David Litt
David Litt entered the White House in 2011 and left in 2016 as a special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter. Described as the “comic muse for the president,” he was the lead writer on four White House Correspondents’ Dinner presentations and has contributed jokes to President Obama’s speeches since 2009. He is the head writer and producer for Funny or Die’s office in Washington, DC. He has also written for the Onion, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, and the New York Times.