Former United States President Barack Obama’s upcoming memoir has created a buzz on social media, in which he has likened Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with a “student eager to impress the teacher.” According to the publishers, the book, titled ‘A Promised Land’, provides insights into the dynamics of US partisan politics and international diplomacy.
Obama speaks about his impression of several world leaders including India's Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The New York Times has reviewed Obama’s memoir, highlighting the political leaders from around the world he has talked about. Obama says Gandhi has “a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject”.
On Sonia Gandhi, the memoir says how “we are told of the handsomeness of men like Charlie Crist and Rahm Emanuel, but not the beauty of women, except for one or two instances, as in the case of Sonia Gandhi.”
Former US Secretary of Defence Bob Gates and former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh both come across as having a kind of “impassive integrity”, the review quotes the book as saying.
“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,” the Crown Publishing Group wrote on its website, describing the book.
The publishing house said the presidential memoirs of Obama will be published in two volumes. The first, A Promised Land, is scheduled for global release on November 17. Publication date for the second volume has not been decided.
