“For Barack Obama … the past isn't just something to mine for a few crowd-pleasing soundbites. It's something that informs and inspires him” (4). “Barack Obama deserves tremendous respect as a historian. He has enormous historical knowledge … and he processes that prodigious knowledge into coherent historical narratives and interpretations” (10–11) These quotations summarize the central premises of Steve Sarson's engaging work, Barack Obama: American Historian. Sarson considers the speeches and writings of Barack Obama, before and during his presidency, examining how America's forty-forth President interacted with America's past.

Sarson labels Obama a “politician–historian” (10) who adheres to a “Radical Whig theory of American history as a continuing endeavour … to implement the ideals” (5) of the Founding Fathers, with a “more perfect Union” being achieved progressively through individual and collective effort (8, 18–26, 278–80). He presents Obama's history as one of increasing inclusivity – where a sense of who is included in America's founding promises and who is included in “We the People” is expanded over time thanks to action and struggle (289–93). Sarson's central arguments are compelling and convincing; he offers a well-evidenced and easily accessible thematic analysis of Obama's historical narrative to emphasize his key inferences.

Barack Obama is divided into different chapters covering various areas of American history. In each section Sarson examines how Obama has related each topic to his overall Whiggish vision. For example, he argues that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are at the heart of Obama's history, representing the textual basis for American principles of freedom and liberty – principles which have been incrementally applied to more people since the eighteenth century (59–63, 74–82, 94–97, 103, 115–18). The Civil War similarly occupies a prominent place in Obama's narrative. Sarson details how Obama has championed the Civil War for destroying slavery, America's “original sin,” thereby further perfecting the Union (134, 151–52, 164–66). He also analyses how Obama views the civil rights movement as part of America's journey towards a more inclusive polity (169, 183–84, 191–93, 202–4). Sarson stresses how Obama sees African American history as fundamentally American history, as a crucial part of his overall vision of the nation's past, rather than something distinctly isolated (24, 198–202). As the President remarked at the ground-breaking of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, “When future generations hear these songs of pain and progress and struggle and sacrifice, I hope they will not think of them as somehow separate from the larger American story. I want them to see it as … an important part of our shared story” (199). No example better typifies Sarson's overall argument that Obama is a historian who views America's past through the lens of progress, struggle, and inclusivity.

Sarson offers a chapter on Obama's relationship with Native American history that problematizes the openness and liberality of Obama's past. In some cases, Native Americans occupy the place of foreign beings outside his conception of the American nationhood; in other instances, Obama has stressed how they are Americans and are part of the nation's expanding community of liberty (8–9, 241–50, 255–61). This is one of the book's most interesting sections. It limits any potential charge that Sarson is simply valorizing Obama. Moreover, it demonstrates how, by including examples which complicate the book's overall theses, Sarson allows for richer analysis and broader conclusions.

There are a number of ways in which Sarson's robust and illuminating arguments could be strengthened. He might benefit from engaging with theorists of collective and historical memory, such as Maurice Halbwachs or Eric Hobsbawm. Their works emphasize how individual memories of the past are crafted via social interaction, and how historical invocations are political constructions formulated to serve present-day needs.Footnote ¹ Interacting with such scholarship would allow Sarson to illuminate how Obama's vision of history did not arise in a vacuum and was fundamentally tied to contemporary concerns. Moreover, Sarson focusses almost exclusively on Obama. There is little consideration of how people have responded to Obama's historical narrative, or the role of speechwriters and advisers in fashioning his words. Sarson's analysis would be enriched by incorporating such examples. These critiques are minor, however, and would only serve to improve what is already an expansive and excellent book. Sarson has produced an innovative and exemplary work which clearly demonstrates how Barack Obama is a Whiggish American historian who has made America's past fundamental to his speeches and writing. This book will encourage more scholars to consider notable political figures as politician–historians, and affords much to academics in a variety of disciplines.