The Obama Year with Jack Beatty, David Gergen, Lani Guinier, Michael Porter and Tom Ashbrook

It’s been one year since Barak Obama delivered his victory speech to an ecstatic crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park.  It seems only fitting, then, that the first Boston Book Festival podcast posted on bostonbookfest.org (and there will be many more to come!) is The Obama Year, an evaluation of the 44th President’s first year in office by some of the country’s leading scholars.

NPR and WBUR’s On Point host Tom Ashbrook leads an illuminating discussion with a panel of fascinating speakers with diverse areas of expertise and experience. Jack Beatty is senior editor of The Atlantic, news analyst for On Point and winner of an American Book Award. He is joined by David Gergen, advisor to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, editor-at-large for U.S. News & World Report and Senior Political Analyst for CNN. Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School, weighs in as well. Also providing his perspective is Michael E. Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School and author of 18 books including Redefining Health Care and On Competition.

A riveting assessment delivered to a capacity crowd in the Boston Public Library’s Rabb Lecture Hall, The Obama Year was so popular that we at the BBF were flooded with requests following the event for recordings and transcripts, even by the lucky few who were able to experience the discussion first-hand.

Enjoy your front-row seats to The Obama Year… as Tom Ashbrook puts it in his opening remarks:

“Today, we will ask, on the evidence of that year, if this transformative figure is emerging as a transformative president. We’ll ask what we’ve learned about Barak Obama and the implications of his governing style and policy instincts, and we’ll ask what we’ve learned about ourselves as a nation, as a polity, in the first year of Obama.”

Video Production by: Paula Aguilera, Jonathan Williams, The Boston Phoenix, WGBH