Obamanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era

"Hertzberg has a novelist's control of metaphor and a comedian's gift for the one-liner."
-The New York Times Book Review

Ob manos is powered by celebrated political essayist Hendrik Hertzberg's "Comments" for The New Yorker's "The Talk of the Town" and the personal blog he began keeping on the magazine's Web site fifteen months before the election. Hertzberg follows the players and the stars while examining the issues that emerged as critical during the debates such as health care, the Iraq war, and the economic crisis. Through his observation and analysis of the campaign's defining moments, we come to see the current political landscape in a new light. Ob manos --the title inspired by a poster Hertzberg saw on a dusty road near Santa Fe-heralds the opening of a new era in American politics.

Hendrik Hertzberg has been a staff writer and editor at The New Yorker since 1992; he was a staff writer there in the early 1970s as well. He has also been a naval officer, a Newsweek reporter, President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter, and (twice) editor of The New Republic, where he (twice) won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He is a 1965 graduate of Harvard.