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Barack Obama's "A Promised Land' sells 3 million copies

By Hillel Italie
Updated  December 18, 2020 3:46pm EST
Barack Obama
Associated Press
article

(Book cover: Courtesy of Crown Publishing/Background images: Official White House photos)

NEW YORK (AP) - Just a month after publication, Barack Obama's "A Promised Land" is well on its way to becoming the best-selling presidential memoir in modern times. 

Crown announced Wednesday that sales have topped 3.3 million copies in the U.S. and Canada, within range of Bill Clinton's "My Life" and George W. Bush's "Decision Points," both of which have sold between 3.5 million and 4 million. "Personal Memoirs of Ulysses Grant" sold hundreds of thousands of copies when published in the 1880s, and remains in print, but there are no precise records of its total sales.

"A Promised Land," the first of two planned volumes, cover Obama's election in 2008 and much of his first term. No release date has been set for the second book. Previous works, written before he became president, include the million-sellers "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST-SELLERS

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

  1. "A Promised Land" by Barack Obama (Crown)
  2. "Greenlights" by Matthew McConaughey (Crown) 
  3. "Bag Man" by Maddow/Yarvitz (Crown) 
  4. "Modern Comfort Food" by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter) 
  5. "The Last Days of John Lennon" by James Patterson (Little, Brown) 
  6. "Guinness World Records 2021" (Guinness World Records) 
  7. "Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House) 
  8. "Modern Warriors" by Pete Hegseth (Broadside) 
  9. "Untamed" by Glennon Doyle (Dial) 
  10. "Killing Crazy Horse" by O'Reilly/Dugard (Holt) 
  11. "Is This Anything?" by Jerry Seinfeld (Simon & Schuster) 
  12. "Forgiving What You Can't Forget" by Lysa TerKeurst (Nelson )
  13. "The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook" by Doocy/Doocy (Morrow )
  14. "The Splendid and the Vile" by Erik Larson (Crown) 
  15. "Humans" by Brandon Stanton (St. Martin's) 

HARDCOVER FICTION

  1. "Ready Player Two" by Ernest Cline (Ballantine) 
  2. "A Time for Mercy" by John Grisham (Doubleday)
  3. "Deadly Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown) 
  4. "The Return" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central) 
  5. "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett (Riverhead) 
  6. "Daylight" by David Baldacci (Grand Central) 
  7. "The Awakening" by Nora Roberts (St. Martin's)
  8. "The Sentinel" by Child/Child (Delacorte) 
  9. "The Law of Innocence" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown) 
  10. "Fortune and Glory" by Janet Evanovich (Atria)
  11. "Anxious People" by Fredrik Backman (Atria) 
  12. "Tom Clancy: Shadow of the Dragon" by Marc Cameron (Putnam) 
  13. "Rhythm of War" by Brandon Sanderson (Tor)
  14. "The Evening and the Morning" by Ken Follett (Viking)
  15. "If It Bleeds" by Stephen King (Scribner)