President’s Half-Brother George the Latest Obama to Sign Book Deal
EmailPresident Obama met his half-brother George during a 1987 visit to Kenya.
"I took comfort in the fact that perhaps one day, when he was older, George, too, might want to know who his father had been, and who his brothers and sisters were, and that if he ever came to me I would be there for him, to tell him the story I knew," the president wrote in “Dreams From My Father.”
Over the weekend David Rosenthal, the publisher and executive vice president of Simon & Schuster, told the Associated Press that George had signed a book deal of his own.
“Even had George Obama not been our President's half brother, his story is moving and inspirational," Rosenthal said. "It is an object lesson in survival, selflessness and courage."
George is one of President Obama’s eight half-siblings.
Tentatively titled “Homeland,” George Obama’s book is scheduled to be published in January 2010, and will be written with self-described “author, war reporter, adventurer” Damien Lewis, author of Apache Dawn, Cobra Gold, Operation Certain Death, Bloody Heroes, Slave and Desert Claw.
The AP says the book will describe George Obama's “fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing.”
The last time we heard about George was just after Inauguration Day when he was arrested in Kenya for possession of marijuana and resisting arrest.
Kenyan Police Chief Joshua Omokulongolo said that George had one joint on him. "He is not a drug peddler," Omokulongolo said. "But it's illegal, it's a banned substance." Charges were ultimately dropped.
George is just the latest Obama to get in on the literary action.
Five days before his inauguration, then-President-elect Obama inked a $500,000 licensing deal for an abridged middle-school version of his best-selling book "Dreams From My Father."
Shortly after Inauguration, the president’s brother-in-law – First Lady Michelle Obama’s brother Craig Robinson, the Oregon State University men’s basketball coach – announced he’d signed a book deal with Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin Group. “A Game of Character” will be published next year.
"I've been privileged to know some extraordinary people in my life," Robinson said in a statement. "I've watched as my sister Michelle, a rock of a mother, became a leader in her own right. My brother-in law, President Barack Obama, who I knew from the first time I met him had something special, continues to inspire all of us."
In April, Candlewick Press bought a book, Ladder to the Moon, from President Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. Publishers Weekly reported that Ladder to the Moon will imagine what lessons Soetoro-Ng’s four-year-old daughter might have learned from her grandmother – President Obama and Soetoro-Ng’s mother — if the two had ever met.
Speaking of whom, Duke University Press announced last month that this November, it will posthumously publish the 1992 anthropology dissertation of the president’s late mother, Dr. S. Ann Dunham, "Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia."
-jpt
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This is a silly and mindless story whose sole purpose is to embarrass our president.
Posted by: matt | June 15, 2009, 2:11 pm 2:11 pm
Isn’t this the same half-brother who was accused in England of pedophilia? It’s my understanding he was exiled from England for two charges of sex with an underage girl?
Posted by: MMiller | June 15, 2009, 2:18 pm 2:18 pm
If all the relatives of our President decide to write books, we will need to hurry up & plant more trees!
Posted by: pauldia | June 15, 2009, 2:57 pm 2:57 pm
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This is a silly and mindless story whose sole purpose is to embarrass our president.
Posted by: matt | Jun 15, 2009 2:11:01 PM===
????? How is this an embarrassment to Obama?
Posted by: Axey | June 15, 2009, 3:40 pm 3:40 pm
I feel like Steve Erkel. “Did I do that?” I don’t think I did, but I apologize either way.
Posted by: Axey | June 15, 2009, 3:42 pm 3:42 pm
Why did you remove all of my posts? I really want to know how this story is an embarrassment to the president.
Posted by: Axey | June 15, 2009, 3:49 pm 3:49 pm
“This is a silly and mindless story whose sole purpose is to embarrass our president.” Posted by: matt | Jun 15, 2009 2:11:01 PM
Why would it be embarrassing to the President for his half brother to write a book? Barack did very well for himself in his past literary forays.
It’s a brilliant way to get around campaign finance laws. A candidate writes a book or two and then people can buy them by the case and the profits go to the author.
Maybe, George is considering going into politics, too?
Posted by: WhereWasThePress? | June 15, 2009, 3:56 pm 3:56 pm
It’s good that there is no law against silly and mindless…
Posted by: DontGet818OnMeNow | June 15, 2009, 4:16 pm 4:16 pm
It appears George Obama will be telling his own story about coming of age as an half-orphan in Kenya. With more interest in country because of President Obama’s patrimony, George, who has been living in poverty, has an opportunity to make a better living. Craig Robinson’s book is about basketball, his passion. Soetoro-Ng’s book is about her mother, an anthropologist.
None of the Obama brothers are accused pedophiles. That is a smear the far Right has been spreading. One of the brothers is said to have make sexual remarks to a group of females that included a teenage girl. The moonbats have exaggerated that into a false claim he was charged with child molestation. The only charge that arose out of the incident was for lying about his identity to the police.
Writing a book and becoming a successful author are different things. Few people become successful writers.
Posted by: Podesta | June 15, 2009, 4:19 pm 4:19 pm
…I’m just guessing that the POTUS told George that someday he would be President of the U.S….
Posted by: DontGet818OnMeNow | June 15, 2009, 4:35 pm 4:35 pm
First off the 1/2 brother is not authoring this book- someone else is interviewing him and writing it for him. Not the same as writing your own memoirs.Has Obama visited his 1/2 siblings through out his life? Or is this only since he knew he was going to run for president. It is like winning the lottery of 400 million and all the creepy crawly relatives emerge from the darkness into the light. Obama grasps onto to his blackness and does not aknowledges his white roots. Remember his father LEFT him with his mother when he was young. Who raised him and paid for him to get a great education? His mother and white grandparents or his father who went back to Kenya??? Iam getting tired of the greatness he is being given. The bail out for home morgages are for only Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac or HUD holders- They dont help the middle class person who got laid off due to this mess and has a conventional loan! I am not a believer in his bail out plans. It will cost the tax payer more in the end.
Posted by: leez | June 15, 2009, 6:32 pm 6:32 pm
Actually another half-brother name Mark Ndesandjo already wrote a semi-autobiographical book titled Observations in Africa…
Posted by: CestWhat | June 15, 2009, 10:05 pm 10:05 pm
Hmmmm, will this be a “Brother Dearest?”
I dislike Obama intensely but think I’ll take a pass on this book.
Posted by: Sunnyr | June 15, 2009, 11:27 pm 11:27 pm
President Obama, like all the rest of us, didn’t get to pick his relatives. There is no reason for him to be embarassed on behalf of any of his relatives regardless of who they are, how they are related, or what they do. He can only be accountable for his own life and behavior, and of that he can be proud. So he doesn’t have a pristine family tree? Neither do most of us.
Posted by: Kathie | June 16, 2009, 8:24 am 8:24 am
It’s like Billy Beer.
Posted by: DontGet818OnMeNow | June 16, 2009, 9:08 am 9:08 am
? how could President Obama accept a 500K book advance for a children’s book he (or even a ghost writer) can not possibly write for the next 4 to 8 years? Sound more like a personal contribution to anyone else?
Posted by: houstonian | June 16, 2009, 1:04 pm 1:04 pm