The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House by Ben Rhodes, 450 pages.

Rhodes has written a wonderful account of the Obama administration and the world he knew during that time. Before volunteering for the Obama campaign, Rhodes had worked for former Democratic Congressman from Indiana, Lee Hamilton, and had been part of the 2006 Iraq Study Group.
Near the end of the book, Rhodes, who had been kept out of meetings on Russian interference during the election, reflects on his last days in the White House when he was let in on what was being uncovered, "I'd run into different staffers who worked on Russia in the government, and they always had the same message: It's even worse than you think. Always the suggestion was that there was more to the story. Trump, one told me, is exactly the kind of person that the Russians liked to invest in for years."

Addendum: Barack Obama, on the eve of traveling to Africa gave us his Africa-focused reading list, and among titles by Nelson Mandela, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Chimamada Ngozi Adichie, he talked about this book by Ben Rhodes, saying, "Ben does not have African blood running through his veins. But few others so closely see the world through my eyes like he can. Ben’s one of the few who’ve been with me since that first presidential campaign. His memoir is one of the smartest reflections I’ve seen as to how we approached foreign policy, and one of the most compelling stories I’ve seen about what it’s actually like to serve the American people."