How Obama Won

Here’s a must-read: The Magic Number: Inside Obama’s Chase for the Presidential Nomination by Jeff Berman, who led the effort to create and execute the delegate plan that Barack Obama used to capture the presidential nomination in 2008.

Ben Smith: “Rich in procedural detail, the book will be a textbook for the small cadre of mechanics who steer the arcane process of delegate selection. But The Magic Number …is also a kind of secret history of the Obama campaign and an antidote to the sweeping narratives that suggest Obama was the inevitable product of historical forces. Berman’s account is the tale of the little things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, and the small but crucial victories that, taken together, won the White House.”