LITERARY NEWS - 7:31 A.M. ET:

NEW YORK (AP) - Another Obama relative has a book deal.
A memoir by George Obama, the president's half brother and a resident of Huruma, Kenya, will be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2010. George Obama, 27, shares the same father with his famous, older half sibling, although George and Barack Obama—20 years apart in age—did not grow up together and did not meet as children.

George is the youngest of the senior Obama's seven children and was born six months before his father died.

COMMENT:  Suggestions for an opening sentence that would make this the biggest bestseller in political history:  "My brother was born in Kenya."

No, no, no.  I didn't mean that.  But, potentially, this book can be an important event.  No presidential personal history is shrouded in as much mystery as is Barack Obama's.  There are whole gaps.  His years at Columbia University, for example, are clouded out, and I don't recall any interviews with anyone who remembers him there.  (Readers, correct me if I'm wrong.)

Maybe George knows something, maybe not.  I'm guessing one thing, though - that he will be visited by someone sent discreetly by the president, and certain suggestions will be made.

Simon & Schuster executives are caught in a bit of a bind here:  The New York publishing industry is overwhelmingly pro-Obama, yet only a tell-all, with some less-than-flattering portraits of the president, would really sell.  Many party invitations to S&S executives hang in the balance. 

June 15, 2009