One of the most anticipated political books of recent memory is an exhaustively reported, absorbing biography that sheds a real-life look on our current president. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama himself...

The stage is almost set for the world’s greatest sporting event, the Olympic Games. As China fends off attacks against its human rights record while battling the unsightly algae on its beaches, it might be heartened by the thought that a Pulitzer prize-winning author could one day invest the 2008 Beijing Olympics . . .