Obama: Year One

This is a book of short essays about Obama's first year from veteran political scientists. This is not a particularly sexy book, but the essays are well-written and packed with good information and data. I was surprised how much I learned from this. The overall tone of the book is to counter the common view that Obama represents a major breakthrough in the nature of American politics. These political scientists by and large say no, with the exception of his impact on how campaigns will be conducted in the future. The essays are basically nonpartisan but you can note some subtle ideological biases in the essays, but not in a consistent direction (there are liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning pieces). This is not the book if you want inside baseball info on Obama's first year, but it's a solid assessment of the challenges he has taken on and the difficulty of achieving success on a very ambitious agenda.