President Obama, Literary Critic

January 8, 2016 | 1 book mentioned

“Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—T. S. Eliot is of this type.” President Obama wrote these words as a twenty-two-year-old student, but Edward Mendelson argues that Obama’s words as a literary critic reveal his tendencies as a politician. Check out our own Michael Bourne’s review of Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, where Obama’s letter was originally published.

is an intern for The Millions. She is the managing editor of Concrete Literary Magazine at Emerson College, where she is pursuing a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. She tweets at @Cara_DuBois.