What happened in 2009 inside the Oval Office? What worked and what failed? What is the president really like on the job and off-hours, using what his best friend called “a Rubik’s Cube in his brain?' These questions are answered here for the first time. In The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Jonathan Alter, one of the country’s most respected journalists and historians, uses his unique access to the White House to produce the first inside look at Obama’s difficult debut. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama’s historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery. But the great promise of “Change We Can Believe In” was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. It is said that Clinton's meetings always ran on too long and that Obama's may be too short.Barack Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. Alter characterizes Obama as a deductive thinker, and a fast one - eager for action. (It's one of his techniques.) In fact, if one doesn't have anything to say at his meetings, you may not be invited back.

(One intimate notes his praise is more likely to be 'What's next?' than 'Good job.') Nevertheless he is equable and attentive, and he listens. Obama is, in this portrait, self-aware and shrewd, well organized and confident, a natural leader who doesn't need or crave praise and is not given to spreading it around. (One advisor called Obama, 'The most unsentimental man I have ever known.') Add to that the knowledge that leaking can lose you your job.

Watch the president dominate his Cabinet with silences and stares (instead of shouting like Clinton or LBJ).

There are stunning portraits of Obama's oldest friends, including Valerie Jarrett, and his early supporters the Kennedys, Daschle, and of the more volatile newcomers, Rahm of course, and Larry Summers, and Geitner. In The Reality of HopeAlter takes the reader into the inner circles of Obama's intimates, those who were there from the start, and the gradually expanding circles, to show for the first time the emotions, rivalries, alliances of the extremely tight-lipped and disciplined administration: Biden, whom he chose because he had the experience even though he was not an early supporter, Hillary, whom he had long wanted for Secretary of State.

The Promise by Jonathan Alter