How successful a president was Barack Obama, Jonathan Chaat will be here to talk about his new book Audacity.

And I want to say no, he actually did a lot. He didn't do everything he wanted to do, but if you compare him by any plausible baseline, he's been tremendously influential.

What effect did Darwin's on the origin of species have on America upon publication?

Randall Fuller will be here to talk about the book The Changed America.

God had created every species in the world separately and immutably.

What Darwin did is he completely unraveled that idea by saying that all species have common ancestors.

Alexander Altair will give us an update from the literary world, and we'll talk about what we and the wider world are reading.

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

Jonathan Chaat joins us now. He is a political columnist for New York Magazine, previously a senior editor at the New Republic.

And the author of a new book called Audacity. How Barack Obama defied his critics and created a legacy that will prevail.

Jonathan, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

And this is not, you make it very clear. This is not a history of the Obama administration. It's not a biography of Obama.

What did you set out to do in this book?

I had an analysis and an argument about Obama and what I thought he had done and what I thought people were getting wrong about him from the beginning in throughout his presidency.

And I wanted to put this argument together.

This is the argument that I think historians or at least the best historians are going to arrive at.

I wanted to correct what I think a lot of people have failed to see about what Obama has managed to do in this country.

And what is the argument you want to make in the book?

I think he's been tremendously successful. Not completely successful. This isn't an authorized account.

And I tried to acknowledge places where he fell short in the book. So it's not coming from Obama.

But I think overall he's been a tremendously successful and influential president.

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