Memoirs Business or Disclosing Secrets?

Political personalities in the world sometimes publish their memoirs about the times when they were in office and had political responsibilities. This issue is common in most countries in the world and if I want to enumerate the number of written memoirs of these personalities in numbers and figures, I may point to the number in size of 100,000 volumes of books.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

Recently Crown Publishing Group, the publisher of the book “A Promised Land”, which is a part of British Penguin Books, in the first day of release of the book on memoirs of former U.S. President Barack Obama, ‘A Promised Land’”, set a record of sales of 887,000 copies of the book for the first day sales. It is interesting to know that the previous record for the first day sales of book by a resident of the White House belonged to the book “Becoming”, written by the U.S. First Lady, Obama’s wife Michelle Obama, as the book sold 725,000 copies in its first day of release. But the significance of this number of sales is, of the secondary importance, well-reception of the book that one can definitely call it business of memoirs. And in my opinion, the first significance of the book for the world community enthusiasm for obtaining a printed copy of it in the era of digitalism is because of its contents that it has been written by a president mostly on the untold events during his presence and administering in the White House. Of course, the contents have been passed through the filtering of the intelligence bodies and experts of international laws, and it gives a hint of implicit information with adding a little bit of disclosure for creating excitement and attraction to read.

The book “A Promised Land” has been published in English, and in the upcoming weeks experts and publishers for the sake of their own profits will publish it in different languages as well as in Persian and it will be available for the public.

What is important for Iranians is those parts of the book regarding the crimes that the leaders of the White House have committed in the West Asia region and especially in Iraq. Of course, Obama might have written some of his open policies regarding Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA. Although I have not received the book yet, some excerpts of the book have been released on the websites which paint Obama, as our Supreme Leader has said, with velvet gloves on steel claws to us, Iranians.

As all know well, Obama was the U.S. President between 2009 and 2017. He has compiled his memoirs in a two-volume collection whose first volume with the title of “A Promised Land” in 768 pages was released on November 17, 2020 by Crown Publishing Group, affiliated to Penguin Books publishing company. After amazing sale of the book in the opening day of its release, Obama acknowledged that this amazing sale of the book was indebted to Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election against Donald Trump. His remark indicates that the contents have nothing to do with attractive items for its sales which led to such a volume of sales in Canada and the U.S.

Obama in the very beginning of his book points to the current abnormal condition in the U.S. and writes, “What I never predicted, besides difficulty in putting the words on the paper, has been the trend of events in almost three and a half years since my last flight with Air Force One. Now that I am seating here (and writing the book), the country is still challenging with a global pandemic and its consequent economic crisis; over 178,000 people (currently the number has exceeded 262,000) have lost their lives, businesses have collapsed and millions of people have lost their jobs. People nationwide from all walks of life poured into streets to protest the deaths of black men and women at the hands of police. Maybe the most worrisome issue is that it seems our democracy is tottering on the edge of precipice of crisis; a crisis rooted in a fundamental conflict between two opposite approaches about this point that what is the U.S. and what it must be; a crisis which has caused division, anger and distrust in the political body of the U.S. and caused continuous violations of structural norms, process measures and commitment to the primary truths that once both Republicans and Democrats took it for granted.”

Of course I will not be content with this part of Obama’s remarks and as soon as I get the book, I will quote more interesting parts of it in my articles, but isn’t describing the current condition of the U.S. in just two sentences by a former president whose political party has won the election an evidence to what the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution has said that the U.S. like the Titanic ship will ultimately sink?

  By: Hamid Reza Naghashian