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Thanks, Obama

My Hopey, Changey White House Years

by David Litt

Narrator David Litt

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Length 9 hours 28 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“This was the first political book I was able to pick up after 2016, and I loved it. David Litt was one of Obama’s speechwriters, and I enjoyed traveling back in time to those happier, more innocent political times. I'd suspected too that his speechwriting credentials would make his memoir pleasant to read, and I was right—I particularly appreciate when form mirrors content, like the run-on sentences illustrating Obama’s style or the sentence-ending prepositions up with which Valerie Jarrett would not put. Oh, and it’s funny—and who doesn’t need a good laugh these days?”
— Claire • East City Bookshop

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Remember when presidents spoke in complete sentences instead of in unhinged tweets? David Litt does. In his comic, coming-of-age memoir, he takes us back to the Obama years – and charts a path forward in the age of Trump.

More than any other presidency, Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House were defined by young people – twenty-somethings who didn’t have much experience in politics (or anything else, for that matter), yet suddenly found themselves in the most high-stakes office building on earth. David Litt was one of those twenty-somethings. After graduating from college in 2008, he went straight to the Obama campaign. In 2011, he became one of the youngest White House speechwriters in history. Until leaving the White House in 2016, he wrote on topics from healthcare to climate change to criminal justice reform. As President Obama’s go-to comedy writer, he also took the lead on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the so-called “State of the Union of jokes.”

Now, in this refreshingly honest memoir, Litt brings us inside Obamaworld. With a humorists’ eye for detail, he describes what it’s like to accidentally trigger an international incident or nearly set a president’s hair aflame. He answers questions you never knew you had: Which White House men’s room is the classiest? What do you do when the commander in chief gets your name wrong? Where should you never, under any circumstances, change clothes on Air Force One? With nearly a decade of stories to tell, Litt makes clear that politics is completely, hopelessly absurd.

But it’s also important. For all the moments of chaos, frustration, and yes, disillusionment, Litt remains a believer in the words that first drew him to the Obama campaign: “People who love this country can change it.” In telling his own story, Litt sheds fresh light on his former boss’s legacy. And he argues that, despite the current political climate, the politics championed by Barack Obama will outlive the presidency of Donald Trump.

Full of hilarious stories and told in a truly original voice, Thanks, Obama is an exciting debut about what it means – personally, professionally, and politically – to grow up.

Biography & Memoir Politics & Economy Humor Nonfiction

David Litt is the New York Times best-selling author of Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years. From 2011-2016, David wrote speeches for President Obama, and was described as ""the comic muse for the president"" for his work on the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Since leaving the White House, he served as the head writer and producer for Funny Or Die's office in Washington, with a focus on improving youth turnout in the 2018 election, and developed a sitcom based on his life in D.C. He frequently appears on CNN and MSNBC to discuss current events.