Please Stop Writing Books About Barack Obama
It never stops. Every week there's a new book on the President, his administration, his victory in 2008, or a member of his family, with new insider-y scoops to be endlessly chewed over on cable news. Enough is enough.
We may get our wish by default, as it seems like everyone who could possibly have written a book about Obama has already done so. A search for Obama in the book section of Amazon.com yields 1,782 results. He's been in office for just over a year. To put that in context, a search for Bill Clinton—president for eight eventful years, not lacking in charisma or scandal—yields 1,324 results.
Here's just a sampling, excluding the two autobiographies the President himself has written. There are serious Obama books by serious writers (The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick). There are crazed, mouth-frothing anti-Obama screeds by crazed mouth-frothers (Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda by Sean Hannity). There are insider accounts of his election by David Plouffe and John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. There are photo books by Life magazine and Essence. And, of course, there's Journey of Hope: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama by Carolyn L. Mazloomi and Meg Cox.
Bob Woodward's as-yet-untitled Obama book (doubtless short and punchy) will be out in September. Delightful conservative yapper Laura Ingraham has the hilarious-sounding Obama Diaries out this summer. In fact, as we speak, it's safe to estimate that anyone with even a tenuous connection to politics is laying out their particular view of Obama in book form.
Clinton has been out of office for a decade. If we conservatively estimate his public life at 18 years, and generously estimate Obama's public life at six years, then terrible and tenuous Amazon-based math gets us to a total of over 5,000 potential books on one man and his circle. What more is there left to say?