Written by two knowledgeable media professionals, How Barack Obama Won: A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election provides a seriously detailed look at how the former Illinois senator made it to the White House.
Authors Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser, the political and elections directors for NBC News, respectivelook with charts, facts and breakdowns of every imaginable group in which voters y, stuffed the bcan be categorized.
Todd and Gawiser's writing is clear, and the statistics fill out the book nicely. However, the authors take a little too much liberty with their hypothetical situations, though not at the cost of disrupting the flow of the story.
The book's theories, however logical, were sometimes far-fetched because of the abundance of information and questionable plausibility of the authors' scenarios.
Ultimately, the book posits that the main reason Barack Obama won the presidency is because he proposed ideas that were a "change from Bush." And because of the incumbent's record-low approval rating, "change mattered the most to voters over any other issue."
The book's introduction takes the reader through the beginning of the election process, mentioning some of the candidates who had something of a shot and those who never did.
This section reads most like a story and is the easiest to follow. It includes "what-if's" and the errors other candidates made that cost them dearly.
The second half of the book, which shows a state-by-state guide, is handy but number-heavy. This isn't a bedtime story or even light reading because of how closely the reader has to pay attention to it.
While the statistics do deter the reader from the overall picture, the book also speculates on why voters chose who they did. The states are broken into chapters of how they were perceived before election night, such as "Red and Blue States."
The title for Pennsylvania reads, "America's Most Overrated Battleground State?"
However, the 54.7 percent to 44.4 percent vote count -- in which Obama became the winner election day -- begs to differ. While the authors are somewhat hyperbolizing with this caption, the statistics are what really catch the eye.
The most surprising fact of the section was the percentage of 18- to 29-year-old voters, which has declined by 3 percent since the 2004 election.
Todd and Gawiser make excellent use of their expertise in creating How Barack Obama Won.
The book is a comprehensive and simple way to learn how our new president came into his role.
Grade: B+
