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In Light of Presidential Victory, Obama’s Book Sales Soar
With his path to the White House clearly paved, president-elect Barack Obama is now seeing sales of his three bestselling books skyrocket. Almost immediately after his presidential win, Dreams from My Father (1995), Change We Can Believe In (2009), and The Audacity of Hope (2006), shot up the Amazon.com bestseller list.
Dreams from My Father was Obama’s first book, published even before his election to the senate. The memoir chronicles his unorthodox childhood and celebrates the cultural inheritance and familial legacy left to him by his Kenyan father. As of this writing, the book is #2 on the Amazon list.
Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise was put together by Obama for America — with a foreword by Barack — and the net proceeds of the book are being donated to charity. Holding steady at Amazon’s #11 slot, this volume outlines in detail the president-elect’s plan to revitalize the country, told with the no-nonsense, clear-headed specifics we’ve come to expect from him.
In the #1 spot is The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, in which Obama expands upon the themes mentioned in his unforgettable speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In addition to exploring his own personal views on faith and values, the book presents Obama’s vision for America: fixing a lacking political process and bringing back a government that is in touch with the American people.
And with his win last night, I think we’re well on our way to making this vision a reality.
Story Source Chicago Sun-Times
Books Fit for a President
The New York Times on Friday printed a fabulous essay by Jon Meacham, entitled “How To Read Like a President”. In this fascinating piece, Meacham explores the reading interests of various presidents, including this year’s candidates.
The following is a quick rundown of both John McCain and Barack Obama’s favorite literary works.
McCain:
The stories of W. Somerset Maugham
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Bear and Turnabout by William Faulkner
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons
Obama:
Works by Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin, Mark Twain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich
The Federalist
Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (the Book Snark’s favorite book ever!)
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
Power Broker by Robert Caro
Working by Studs Terkel
Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
Both candidates like:
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
The tragedies of William Shakespeare
And if you haven’t done so yet…GO VOTE!
Story & Image Source The New York Times
Share Your Hopes & Dreams With President Obama
OK, so the election is still six days away, but that’s not stopping Skyhorse Publishing from announcing its plans to release Letters to President Obama: Americans Share Our Hopes and Dreams with the First African-American President. Readers are encouraged to submit their own “words, thoughts, perspectives, and dreams in a letter for this new era.” The book aims to capture the country’s hope and optimism during this time of change and progression, memorializing how we, as a nation, come together at a pivotal moment in American history.
The editors of Letters to President Obama are professors at the University of Michigan and Cornell. Associate publisher Bill Wolfsthal said they will edit the submissions “to create a thought-provoking and poignant collection”, thereby ensuring the book’s place as an important literary and historical document — and not a platform for right-wing nutjobs.
But what if Obama doesn’t win on November 4? “We’ll deal with that if it happens,” Wolfsthal said. “The book might still be a poignant piece of history if Obama should lose.”
Letters to President Obama is scheduled to be released in April 2009.
To submit your own letter, visit the book’s website.
Story Source Publishers Weekly, Letters to President Obama | Image Source Obey Giant
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WHAT IS A SNARK?
The Snark is a creature created by Lewis Carroll in his poem "The Hunting of the Snark". To give a proper description of Snarks, one must look no further than Carroll himself, who summed them up in one word: Unimaginable.
But this much we do know: some have feathers, some have whiskers. Snarks sleep a lot, yet they are an ambitious lot -- with very little sense of humor. They love bathing-machines and tend to bring them wherever they go; they are also handy for striking a light. Snarks live on a far-off island, a place filled with chasms and crags, and are constantly on the lookout for Snark-hunters. Their mortal enemies are hope, care, thimbles and forks.
The Book Snark's Pick for Best Book of 2008
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