Obama's Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House

Obama's Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House is a reporter's-eye view of events unfolding in 2007 and 2008 as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd, Bill Richardson (et al.) jockeyed for position for the Democratic nomination for president, while John McCain, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and others attempted to wrest control of the Republican nomination for their party. All ran for President in a wide-open free-for-all following the end of George W. Bush's 8 years in office.

Author Connie (Corcoran) Wilson, a veteran reporter for five newspapers and numerous blogs, followed the candidates from the Iowa caucuses all the way through to the convention (Volume I) and, after that, from the convention through the tumultuous presidential campaign itself (Volume II), until President Barack Obama's Inauguration as the 44th President of the United States in January of 2009 (covered in Volume II). Writing as a member of the Yahoo Content Contributors' Network, retired sixty-something schoolteacher Wilson set off on an adventurous odyssey of her own that earned her the title 2008 Content Producer of the Year for Politics with 1,000 articles that garnered over three million hits.

Filing three articles daily from the field, her adventures inside the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the Ron Paul Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis, the Belmont Town Hall Meeting in Nashville or elsewhere (Florida, Nevada, etc.) are detailed, insightful and, at times, humorous. The parallels and insights gleaned from following the presidential campaign in 2008 provide useful background material for the presidential race of 2016 now underway--with some of the same candidates that ran 8 years ago in the field again today.

Never one to ignore an amusing anecdote or photo, the quotes, facts and polling data are only one small component of an engrossing read with multiple pictures that sum up the end of an era in presidential campaigns as the use of the Internet and the increasing importance of money in campaigning are clearly cataloged. An entertaining, informative and relevant slice of recent history.