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title: "A Promised Land Audiobook Review: 29 Hours of Obama for One Credit"
description: "A promised land audiobook review that leads with the math: 29 hours, $0.34/hour, self-narrated, 4.8 stars. Why this political memoir audiobook earns the credit."
tags: [audible, audiobooks, nonfiction, bookreview]
canonical_url: https://getcreditworth.com/blog/a-promised-land-audiobook-review
I review audiobooks the way most people actually buy them: numbers first, then an honest check on whether the runtime is a commitment worth making. A Promised Land made the numbers easy.
29 hours and 9 minutes. Barack Obama reading his own memoir. One Audible credit, roughly $0.34 an hour. Rating: 4.8 stars from over 30,000 reviews. Among political memoirs audiobooks on the platform, this is the one everything else gets compared to. Here is why it mostly deserves that.
Why the narrator is the whole game
Most memoirs hire a professional narrator. Fine for most books. But for a president who built his public image on how he speaks, a stand-in would be a crime. Obama reads it himself, and that changes what you get out of the book.
The deadpan delivery on the 2008 campaign chaos. The slight pause before he lands a joke about Mitch McConnell. The weight in his voice when he talks about kids in cages. None of that survives in print.
The trade-off is pace. Obama reads like he talks: deliberate, careful, occasionally circling. A print reader can skim a passage in two minutes that takes him six. You do not listen to this book for speed. You listen for the man explaining his own decisions in his own cadence.
What the 29 hours actually cover
Volume one ends in May 2011, with the bin Laden raid. That means no second term, no Obamacare aftermath, no Trump. What you get instead: the 2004 convention speech that made him, the 2008 primary fight against Hillary Clinton, the financial crisis response, and the long grind of healthcare reform.
If you want the second term, you wait for the volume he keeps promising.
- Runtime: 29 hours 9 minutes
- Cash price: $42.98, or one credit
- Cost per hour: $0.34
- Rating: 4.8 stars from 30,000+ ratings
- Narrator: Barack Obama himself
- Coverage: 2004 to May 2011
Who this earns a credit for
Three groups get real value. Politics junkies who want the inside version of the 2008-2011 story. Audiobook listeners who value a self-narrated memoir, which is a shrinking category. And anyone who has read the print version, because the audio adds a layer the page cannot.
The audience it does not serve: people who want a fast history lesson. This is a memoir, not a summary, and it lingers.
The honest caveat
The book is not a tell-all. Obama is generous with former rivals and sparing with blame. Critics have noted he leaves out as much as he reveals. If you are shopping for a scandalous political memoir, look elsewhere. If you want the measured, first-person record of the first two years of a presidency, this is the definitive one.
Full value breakdown on the book page: https://getcreditworth.com/books/0525633723
