The World as It Is

By: Ben Rhodes

Narrated by: Ben Rhodes, Mark Deakins

Random House presents the audiobook of The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes, read by Mark Deakins with and introduction read by the author.

This is a book about two people making the most important decisions in the world. One is Barack Obama. The other is Ben Rhodes.

The World As It Is tells the full story of what it means to work alongside a radical leader; of how idealism can confront reality and survive; of how the White House really functions; and of what it is to have a partnership, and ultimately a friendship, with a historic president.

A young writer and Washington outsider, Ben Rhodes was plucked from obscurity aged 29. Chosen for his original perspective and gift with language, his role was to help shape the nation’s hopes and sense of itself. For nearly ten years, Rhodes was at the centre of the Obama Administration – first as a speechwriter, then a policymaker, and finally a multi-purpose aide and close collaborator.

Rhodes puts us in the room at the most tense and poignant moments in recent history: starting every morning with Obama in the Daily Briefing; waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room; reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran; leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government; confronting the resurgence of nationalism that led to the election of Donald Trump.

This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama’s presidency. It is an essential record of the last decade. But it also shows us what it means to hold the pen, and to write the words that change our world.

©2018 Ben Rhodes (P)2018 Random House Audiobooks

Critic reviews

Ben’s one of the few who’ve been with me since that first presidential campaign. His memoir is one of the most compelling stories I’ve seen about what it’s actually like to serve the American people for eight years in the White House (BARACK OBAMA)

A good read

this book offers an intimate portrait of the Obama Administration Through The Eyes of one of his closest aides. Ben Rhodes did a good job of revisiting the eight years that he would have toiled wholeheartedly believing in everything that President Obama and the administration's worldview stood for. he was candid and intimate about how this experience would have affected him at various stages and shaped the person he is now

As inspiring as sad

Inspiring and very well written as the speeches he wrote for President Obama. Sad, as there is a sense that all that he believed in and has worked on for almost ten years has gone.

Ben Rhodes should've narrated the whole book

My only complaint is that I wish that Ben Rhodes had narrated the whole book and not just the Preface. It was easier to hear the emotion behind the narrative when he was narrating his story.