President Barack Obama’s A PROMISED LAND Is Nominated for the 2022 Best Spoken Word Album GRAMMY® Award

President Barack Obama’s A PROMISED LAND Nominated for the 2022 Best Spoken Word Album GRAMMY Award

November 23, 2021

President Barack Obama’s #1 New York Times bestselling audiobook A Promised Land, read by the author, is now a 2022 Best Spoken Word Album GRAMMY® Award nominee. A major literary achievement that brings history vividly to life in his own voice, A Promised Land is a jewel in the canon of presidential memoirs—a recording for posterity that will endure for decades.

Listen to a clip from this extraordinary audiobook production:

audio

A Promised Land

Author: Barack Obama
Read By: Barack Obama

In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, A Promised Land, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Watch a video of President Obama discussing recording the audiobook of A Promised Land

Obama, a master orator, is skilled at keeping the listener’s attention. It’s the content, of course: the fly-on-the-wall scenes of campaign conversations and congressional dealmaking. But it is the delivery, too. A nimble code switcher, Obama is comfortable being the poet, as he describes the majesty of the Hindu Kush from the window of a helicopter; the professor, as he delves into Keynesian economics; and the openhearted family man, as he recounts the death of his grandmother.The New York Times Book Review

In this memoir, both a first-person history lesson and the inside story of how he and his family tackled their new life, Obama opens up about balancing the plan with the politics and how heavily he leaned upon his advisers and staff to thread the needle on a never-ending series of crises during his first term. His familiar voice and cadence are an added bonus, and he reads with emotion—and even gives us a few impressions of people he met along the way. Highly recommended.Booklist, Starred Audiobook Review

The nominations were announced today by the Recording Academy®, and the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards® will be presented on Monday, January 31, 2022. The full list of this year’s nominees can be found here.

Penguin Random House Audio titles have previously earned 17 GRAMMY® Awards and 47 additional GRAMMY® nominations.

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