A Promised Land: The powerful political memoir from the former US President

by Barack Obama

I saw how the tremendous energy of the movement couldn’t be sustained without structure, organization, and skills in governance.

to encourage participation and active citizenship among those who’d been left out, and to teach them not just to trust their elected leaders, but to trust one another, and themselves.

The study of law, it turned out, wasn’t so different from what I’d done during my years of solitary musing on civic questions. What principles should

govern the relationship between the individual and society, and how far did our obligations to others extend?

How does social change happen, and how can rules ensure that ev...

I asked them to describe their world as it was and as they would like it to be. It was a simple exercise I’d done many times, a way for people to bridge the reality of their communities and their lives with

between working for change within the system and pushing against it; wanting to lead but wanting to empower people to make change for themselves; wanting to be in politics but not of it.

“Do you ever think about how JFK and Bobby Kennedy seemed to tap into what’s best in people?”