Up close with the Obamas and their cute pooches in ‘Uncommon Grace’
This new book is neatly and thoughtfully divided into 17 chapters, modestly and judiciously embellished with previous spoken words by Obama and others.
By RICK KOGANTHEN-PRESIDENT Barack Obama reads to children alongside his faithful companion, dog Bo, during the White House Easter Egg Roll in 2013(photo credit: JASON REED/REUTERS)
The members of the Obama family, two of whom made notable television appearances as part of the recent Democratic National Convention, include two Portuguese water dogs who lived in the White House. Those dogs – as you may have forgotten or never known or never cared – were named Bo, a male, and Sunny, a female.For all the things about the Obamas that you remember, you get to know them intimately in a new book that is nothing short of a family album for the ages. Barack Obama: Uncommon Grace (CityFiles, August 2020) is a marvel. Given access to virtually every moment of every day during the eight years of Obama’s presidency, from the dark to the playful to the heartbreaking, a group of seven photographers produced images that will amuse, inspire, delight and perhaps stay with you forever. Only a few have ever been seen before.This book is the work of Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, the founders of CityFiles Press, a Chicago-based company that is itself something of a wonder.This new book is neatly and thoughtfully divided into 17 chapters, modestly and judiciously embellished with previous spoken words by Obama and others. It is, as Cahan and Williams write in an informative introduction, the first book “that takes a comprehensive look at the Obama White House years through the photographs from all seven photographers who worked in the White House Press Office.”These are their names: Pete Souza, Lawrence Jackson, Chuck Kennedy, Samantha Appleton, Sonya Hebert, Amanda Lucidon and David Lienmann.Together, they took something in the mind-boggling neighborhood of 4.3 million photographs, roughly 1,500 a day, day in and day out.Souza was the chief photographer, a veteran of The Chicago Tribune who had previously served as a White House photographer during the Ronald Reagan administration and who had known Obama since his first day in the US Senate in 2005. His visual coverage resulted in the fine 2008 book The Rise of Barack Obama (Triumph Books Entertainment). He has also published other books and is something of a Twitter thorn in the side of the current occupant of the White House.He knows the former president as well as most, and one reason for the book’s potency, even beyond astonishing access given the photographers, is that, as Souza puts it, Obama is “just so comfortable in his own skin.”Williams and Cahan had long been fans of Souza, and the idea for this book occurred to them soon after Obama left office. But they waited. “The time just wasn’t right,” says Cahan. “And we wanted to see how the new presidency would work out. This, in a sense, became our pandemic project, and we worked on it every day, 12 hours a day, for months. We thought it a good idea to remind America what a president looked like.”“This project was for me restorative and therapeutic,” says Williams.They were able to choose the book’s 300 or so images from 15,000 made available by the White House online during Obama’s presidency.Obama looks so very young, as does his wife, Michelle. Their daughters are little girls. There he is, holding and playing with babies and saying, “One of the best perks about being president is anybody will hand you their baby.” There he is, playing basketball; standing on the Great Wall of China; greeting schoolkids and soldiers and visiting cemeteries; readying to meet such varied celebrities as Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Murray, Willie Nelson and Elie Wiesel; hugging congressman John Lewis; and dancing with Michelle.As for those dogs, they get their own chapter, “A Dog’s Life.” Bo came first, the fulfillment of a promise to his girls on his first election victory. Sunny came a few years later.Bo posed challenges for photographer Chuck Kennedy, who said, “It’s hard to see his eyeballs because his fur is so curly around his eyes.”He met that challenge as did the others in less gentle circumstances.The most famous of the book’s photos was taken by Souza on May 1, 2011. It shows Obama in polo shirt and windbreaker, surrounded by members of the national security team when they were receiving updates on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House. This image is but one of about 100 Souza shot during his 45 minutes in that room at that time.YOU WON’T find this book at your neighborhood bookstore, for it is CityFiles first venture into the e-book realm.“This was never intended to be a traditional book,” says Cahan. “We are thrilled with this process. The photos look terrific, and this is the way in which people read and consume books these days. The world is changing, and this is an important and powerful way of communicating. Within seconds you can sample the book and download it, and it will not set you back a fortune.”He’s right about the photos, they snap off the screen.“White House photographers have been taking pictures of presidents sine John F. Kennedy,” Cahan and Williams write. “But many of their photos – of official acts and staged photo opportunities – grow stale over years. Obama’s photographers... have created an archive that will last.”There is one memorable photo near the book’s end: Obama meeting with a few dozen White House staffers in the Oval Office the morning after Donald’s Trump’s 2016 election victory. He is saying, “We are Americans first. We are patriots first. We all want what’s best for this country.”In this era of divisive and contentious politics, you can’t argue with that. (Chicago Tribune/TNS)BARACK OBAMA: UNCOMMON GRACEBy Richard Cahan and Michael WilliamsCityFiles PressKindle Edition; $9.99
