# The Punahou Years *A Biography of Barack Obama* — Legendary Biographies No. 182 - **Subject:** Barack Hussein Obama II - **Written by:** Theodore Pemberton - **Shelf:** Power & Politics / American Politics - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 201 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 201 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-137-6) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Eric Mercer (ISBN 979-8-90623-238-0) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/182-the-punahou-years.html ## About this book January 20, 2009, the West Front of the United States Capitol. Barack Hussein Obama II, forty-seven, is sworn in as the forty-fourth President of the United States — the first Black president in the country's 232-year history. He has served three years in the United States Senate. He has the largest single-day inauguration crowd in American history. He will serve two terms. He will win the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009. He will sign the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill in July 2010, and the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015. He will order the May 1, 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He will be succeeded on January 20, 2017 by Donald Trump. Theodore Pemberton's biography opens earlier — in Honolulu, where Barack was born on August 4, 1961, the only child of a Kenyan economics-graduate-student father and an eighteen-year-old Kansas-American mother — and follows the arc through the Punahou School years, the move to Jakarta with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro, the return to Honolulu and the Stanley Ann Dunham years, the Occidental College and Columbia University years, the Chicago Developing Communities Project work in Roseland, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law Review presidency, the long University of Chicago Law School teaching and Illinois State Senate years, the 2004 Audacity of Hope Democratic National Convention keynote, the 2004 Senate election, the long 2008 primary contest with Hillary Clinton, the eight years in office, the 2017 transition to Donald Trump, and the long Kalorama-house and Martha's-Vineyard-house post-presidential years. What emerges is a portrait of the first Black American president — and the eight-year administration the country has spent the years since trying to fully assess. ## Contents 1. Honolulu 2. Jakarta and the Return 3. The Organizer 4. Harvard 5. Springfield 6. The Speech 7. Yes We Can 8. Day One 9. Obamacare 10. The Situation Room 11. The Birther 12. The Constraints 13. Charleston 14. Trump 15. The Post-Presidency 16. Michelle 17. 2024 18. The Promise ## Questions **Who is The Punahou Years about?** Barack Hussein Obama II. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Punahou Years — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,674 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 59,500 words, 18 chapters, 201 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Theodore Pemberton is a Boston-based biographer whose books on American presidents and political operatives have been shortlisted three times for the Lukas Prize. He writes biography that takes campaign finance and procedural history seriously, focusing on the mechanics of political power. His early publications, including The Playbook and The Chief, established his reputation for meticulous archival research. His subsequent works, such as The Founder, Blexit, and The Bunker Hours, continued to examine the inner workings of political machines. With The 1972 Florida Primary, The Bletchley Park Hut, and The Mar-a-Lago Storeroom, he turned his attention to specific, high-stakes environments that shaped national policy and intelligence operations. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spends his time teaching writing workshops and rowing on the Charles River.