NEW YORK
Just a month after publication, Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” is well on its way to becoming the best-selling presidential memoir in modern times.
Obama memoir sells a record 1.7 million copies in first week
Crown announced Wednesday that sales have topped 3.3 million copies in the U.S. and Canada, within range of Bill Clinton’s “My Life” and George W. Bush’s “Decision Points,” both of which have sold between 3.5 million and 4 million. “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses Grant” sold hundreds of thousands of copies when published in the 1880s, and remains in print, but there are no precise records of its total sales.
“A Promised Land,” the first of two planned volumes, covers Obama’s election in 2008 and much of his first term. No release date has been set for the second book. Previous works, written before he became president, include the million sellers “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”
Obama still has to catch up to his wife, Michelle Obama, whose “Becoming” has sold more than 8 million copies in North America since coming out in 2018.
