Barack Obama’s 1st biographer, David Mendell: Michelle didn’t care for the book

He’s Barack Obama’s first biographer. But journalist David Mendell doesn’t expect his award-winning 2007 book, Obama: From Promise to Power, to land a spot in Obama’s presidential library.

Mendell and I were colleagues at the Chicago Tribune through much of the 2000s, but we barely exchanged hellos back then because he was so busy covering Obama’s rise to the U.S. Senate.

So I learned a lot—including just how hard Obama worked to conceal his smoking habit—as Mendell and I finally got to catch up on-stage at Dominican University in River Forest, in this installment of the Wednesday Journal Conversations / Chicago Public Square Podcast series, recorded Nov. 20, 2019.

Listen here, on your favorite podcast player, via Spotify, YouTube and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers* or on iTunes (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).



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*Even if you don’t have an Alexa speaker, you can turn iOS and Android phones into Alexa devices for free—a low-impact way to experiment with the technology.

Science fiction, Radicalized: An interview with Cory Doctorow

Wanna know what terrible technology is headed your way in the years ahead? Journalist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow says it’s not hard: Take a look at what The Powers That Be are foisting on prisoners and students.

Doctorow joined the Chicago Public Square Podcast for half an hour or so to talk about police brutality; controversial high-rise developments and “poor-doors”; the criminalization of copyright law; and his new book, Radicalized—a collection of four science fiction novellas that the jacket calls “Tales of Our Present Moment.”

Listen here, on your favorite podcast player, via Spotify, YouTube and Pandora, on Amazon’s Alexa-powered speakers* or on iTunes (say “Hey, Siri! Play Chicago Public Square Podcasts”).



Enjoying these podcasts? Keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.

And if you’re a Doctorow fan, check out his Craphound website, where you can download many of his works (but not Radicalized) free; and Boing Boing, the news site he co-edits.

*Even if you don’t have an Alexa speaker, you can turn iOS and Android phones into Alexa devices for free—a low-impact way to experiment with the technology. (Photo: Charlie Meyerson.)